> American Academy of Pediatrics treats nobody. At best it’s a lobbyist group

In their FYE 2025, the AAP spent 6% and 3% of its $113mm budget on advocacy and membership, respectively [1].

Most of its money goes to child health activities (43%), educational publishing (30%) and education activities (14%).

[1] https://downloads.aap.org/AAP/PDF/AAP%20Financial%20Statemen...

    Nature of Business
    The mission of the American Academy of Pediatrics (the Academy) is to obtain optimal … health and well-being for all …. The Academy seeks to promote this goal by encouraging and assisting its members in their efforts …, by providing support and counsel …, and by serving as an advocate … within the community at large.

They don’t actually treat anybody. They spend $28 million a year on salaries and benefits for people who advocate for improving children’s health, not on treating children. And then some more on offices and software for those advocates to use, for meals and meetings attended by those employees, postage, freight, etc, etc. None of that is related to treating people.

> They don’t actually treat anybody

Neither does a pathologist. Or, more removed, anyone in research. Not everyone in medicine who doesn’t see patients is fluff.

I’m open to the idea that they’re a BS organisation. But saying they’re upstream from patient care is naïvely obvious; not every engineer is a car mechanic.

I agree that it’s obvious, which is why I disagreed with someone who said that this decision would “kill” people. They clearly can’t tell the difference.

I think the content of the article sufficiently disproves your assertion. Actually, the headline does too IMHO.

The idea that it’s immoral for NGOs (much less professional orgs) to represent themselves to legislatures is unserious.

I didn’t say it was immoral, I said that canceling a grant to them doesn’t somehow reduce treatment to patients. Of course they’re going to claim that it will, because they want to be important. But the reality is that most of what they do is either unnecessary, or easily replaced. Telling new mothers not to drink during pregnancy is useful but we don’t require this particular group to do it. Anyone can tell new mothers that. Same with all the other “outreach” and “advocacy” stuff that they do.

I'd want to see the grants in question (which infuriatingly haven't been linked to yet..?) before drawing further conclusions. And I continue to be annoyed at how nudge-based so much policy is nowadays... even more so when it seems to make an impact? Otherwise, fair enough.

Personally I take the lack of concrete information as a sign that the reporter knows that this is ultimately unimportant. If it were contracts for something important then those details would be included in the story, because they support the narrative that this is a bad move.

The reality? Based on what? What specific healthcare background do you have? What, specifically, do you know that you didn’t literally learn in the six seconds you spent on their website that you seem to think has made you an expert?

I’m so, so tired of people who think that building some shitty React apps, or whatever, means they’re experts in everything they’ve spent 12 seconds thinking about.

I’m pretty tired of people who see an opinion they don’t like and immediately assume that they know everything about the commenter and their hypothetical “apps”. Ad hominem is so lame. Besides, the last app I wrote used XUL with XBL for reusable and composable widgets thank you very much.

That’s not the point. This isn’t about a professional association losing some government money. This is about the government’s war on vaccines.

This is about the thin skin of a government official who can't stand the fact no one serious respects him.

Same coin, other side.