WHEREAS: many states require physicians to obtain “category 1” CME credit to maintain their licenses, and
WHEREAS: Category 1 credit is under the control of the ACCME, which is controlled by the AMA, since all “CME providers” are directly or indirectly accredited by ACCME; and
WHEREAS: the ACCME imposes increasingly costly and onerous bureaucratic requirements that only large, well-funded organizations can meet, thereby increasing the cost of medical care, and
WHEREAS: the AMA, through the ACCME, can control the content of CME programs through covert means disguised as enforcing compliance with nebulous, subjective bureaucratic requirements, and
WHEREAS: the AMA represents only a small minority of practicing physicians (perhaps 15%), and
WHEREAS: the AMA, while accrediting required courses in ethics, embraces a new ethic that contradicts the Oath of Hippocrates and Judeo-Christian principles, and offends the consciences of physicians, as by sacrificing the welfare and even the life of individual patients to considerations of population and societal health; and
WHEREAS: the AMA has pervasive conflicts of interest with commercial enterprises, government agencies, third-party payers, powerful institutions, and foundations, which have an agenda to influence choice of treatment, modes of practice, and ethical and professional standards, and
WHEREAS: the ACCME is self-accredited and accountable to no one, and
WHEREAS: scientific truth and medical innovation can thrive only in an atmosphere of freedom, and
WHEREAS: physicians are professionals, not the subjects of self-appointed or governmental overseers and censors of what they must study,
BE IT THEREFORE RESOLVED THAT: AAPS promote state legislation to end the ACCME/AMA monopoly on defining CME requirements for licensure.
