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Most tea party protests against health care reform feature a standard cast of characters. Revolution-era patriots in greatcoats and tricorne hats; LaRouchies handing out pictures of Obama with a Hitler mustache; the people with the giant fetus signs; and some guy dressed as an actual tea bag. Then, there are the doctors. Real doctors. They wear white coats and they look respectable. And many of them come from a group with a respectable-sounding name—the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons.

Yet despite the lab coats and the official-sounding name, the docs of the AAPS are hardly part of mainstream medical society. Think Glenn Beck with an MD. The group (which did not return calls for comment for this story) has been around since 1943. Some of its former leaders were John Birchers, and its political philosophy comes straight out of Ayn Rand. Its general counsel is Andrew Schlafly, son of the legendary conservative activist Phyllis. The AAPS statement of principles declares that it is “evil” and “immoral” for physicians to participate in Medicare and Medicaid, and its journal is a repository for quackery. Its website features claims that tobacco taxes harm public health and electronic medical records are a form of “data control” like that employed by the East German secret police. An article on the AAPS website speculated that Barack Obama may have won the presidency by hypnotizing voters, especially cohorts known to be susceptible to “neurolinguistic programming”—that is, according to the writer, young people, educated people, and possibly Jews.

The AAPS journal’s archives present a kind of alternate-universe scientific world, in which abortion causes breast cancer and vaccines cause autism, but HIV does not cause AIDS. Cutting carbon emissions represents a grave threat to global health. In 2005, the journal erroneously claimed that illegal immigration had caused a leprosy epidemic in the US, a claim that was reported as fact in more mainstream outlets such as Lou Dobbs’ show.
Much like its friends in the tea-party movement, AAPS sees threats to liberty lurking everywhere. Peer review, a long-standing hospital practice that helps doctors learn from and prevent errors, is viewed as the source of great injustice by AAPS, which fights attempts to micromanage doctors with such bureaucratic nuisances as medical evidence about what works and what doesn’t. Computers, too, are an ominous threat. The organization has resisted the use of electronic medical records—which, naturally, represents an attempt by the government to acquire masses of private information about American citizens.

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Angle has been linked in the 1990’s to the Independent American Party which claims to be libertarian, but is really nothing more than a Christian Conservative political party. She was a member for six years.

The problem is, of course, that the IAP has some interesting platforms with regards to “sodomites”, that is lesbians and gays. Documents obtained state that her former party believes that lesbians, gays and transpeople are “child-molesting, HIV-carrying, Hell-bound freaks.” Angle left the IAP in 1997 in order to further her political career by becoming a Republican. This was, of course, her plan since, outside of Vermont, there are very few third parties which manage to gain any kind of traction. In Vermont, the Progressive Party has some, albeit small, representation in the Legislature. Angle was helpful in circulating a petition to get the IAP on the ballot in Nevada. The party’s manifesto includes acknowledging “that many Americans have ignored the Laws of God.”

Sharon Angle has refused comment on this, which is not surprising in the least. She seems to have been trying her best to avoid being called on her more outrageous and dangerous ideological beliefs, which she apparently does believe in. This largely means that she is doing her best to become the next Senator from Nevada without anyone ever actually getting to know that she is a supporter of homophobia and discrimination

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