{"id":6215,"date":"2005-12-30T14:05:46","date_gmt":"2005-12-30T19:05:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=6215"},"modified":"2005-12-30T14:05:46","modified_gmt":"2005-12-30T19:05:46","slug":"the-right-balks-at-a-national-health-museum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/the-right-balks-at-a-national-health-museum\/","title":{"rendered":"The right balks at a national health museum"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There are plenty of great museums in Washington, but Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-Ga.) has an idea for one more: a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nationalhealthmuseum.org\/index.html\">national health museum<\/a> near the Smithsonian. To hear Gingrey&#8217;s pitch, it sounds like a pretty straightforward and non-controversial concept: there would be one museum near the national mall devoted exclusively to medicine and health. &#8220;My vision of it is the history of medicine,&#8221; Gingrey said. &#8220;What we have done, how far we have come, just basically like, similar to what you have in the space museum.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Gingrey introduced a bill (H.R. 3630), it picked up <a href=\"http:\/\/thomas.loc.gov\/cgi-bin\/bdquery\/z?d109:HR03630:@@@P\">some bi-partisan support<\/a>, and it seemed like the kind of effort that wouldn&#8217;t generate a whole lot of controversy. After all, who&#8217;s against the study of medicine and health?<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.family.org\/cforum\/news\/a0038469.cfm\">Take a wild guess<\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>[S]ome conservatives fear the museum could be a back door for promoting a liberal agenda. Jim Backlin, a lobbyist for the Christian Coalition, told [Focus on the Family&#8217;s news website] he could envision displays covering issues such as abortion, embryonic stem cell research, sex education and more.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This is just yet another dumb, expensive idea,&#8221; he said. &#8220;I noticed that one of the original board members an executive of Planned Parenthood, one of the most dangerous and destructive organizations in America.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Worried about the political implications, Gingrey added a disclaimer to his legislation, explaining that the health museum will avoid discussion of health-related issues that may be controversial, including &#8220;abortion, physician assisted suicide, human embryonic stem cell research, human cloning and even in vitro fertilization.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>In other words, we can have a health museum, as long as far-right activists are satisfied that people only learn about <i>certain kinds<\/i> of health.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There are plenty of great museums in Washington, but Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-Ga.) has an idea for one more: a national health museum near the Smithsonian. To hear Gingrey&#8217;s pitch, it sounds like a pretty straightforward and non-controversial concept: there would be one museum near the national mall devoted exclusively to medicine and health. &#8220;My [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6215"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6215\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}