Donald Trump

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally Thursday in Selma, North Carolina. More than 400 doctors have signed an online petition calling Trump a threat to health and urging voters to reject his candidacy.

(Evan Vucci, Associated Press)

Aaron Stupple is a doctor in Boston.

BOSTON -- Hundreds of doctors have come out publicly to condemn Donald Trump as a threat to health and well-being.

In addition to the responsibility for their individual patients, doctors have a duty to advocate for the public at large. Many doctors are uncomfortable with the consequences that a Trump presidency may have on the basic elements of health.

At this writing, 411 have taken the step to make their concerns clear to the voting public by signing a joint statement, available online, that "Donald Trump is a health threat."

They single out four features of Trump's campaign that are particularly worrisome:

* His proposal to deport millions threatens the emotional and physical health of many by breaking up families and disrupting support structures for the frail and elderly.

* His open support of discriminatory policies and attitudes fractures the diverse health care workforce and denigrates vulnerable populations.

* His support for expanding torture and targeting innocents in wartime shows a disregard for the basic dignity and sanctity of human life that is the foundation of our work.

* His disregard for facts and science stands to undermine our efforts to tackle complex health care challenges, from the basics of providing quality care to emerging issues like opioid abuse and the Zika virus.

While it is important not to mix politics with medicine, it is also important not to remain silent when faced with the potential for disaster.

For the signatories of this document, their misgivings about Donald Trump run so deep that they felt an obligation to speak up.

Here is the doctors' statement in full:

As doctors, we swore an oath to serve and protect our fellow human beings. We provide care to those in need, build and use scientific evidence, and ensure that our actions are in the best interests of our patients. When social and political forces threaten our patients directly or our ability to provide this care, we have a duty to speak out. The American Medical Association calls on doctors to advocate for "political changes that ameliorate suffering and contribute to human well-being."



The undersigned doctors, representing multiple disciplines and stages of practice, reject a Donald Trump presidency as a threat to the goals of medicine, and urge others to reject this candidate as well.



In general, Mr. Trump has no regard for facts, for science, or for a thoughtful and evidence-based approach to complex problems. Instead, he is erratic and unstable. Still worse, he overgeneralizes and oversimplifies complex problems, often demonizing and scapegoating whole segments of the population, including the marginalized and vulnerable groups we work hard to protect.



Regardless of whether this originates from willful ignorance or savvy politics, it is dangerous and made evident in the following specific instances:



Mr. Trump has proposed the mass deportation of over 10 million undocumented immigrants, a potential humanitarian crisis that harks back to the humiliation, misery, and death of forced expulsions throughout human history. Families would be broken apart, support networks upended, and children and elderly left to fend for themselves in unstable conditions. We condemn this proposal, and this uncaring attitude towards our fellow human beings, in the strongest terms possible.



Mr. Trump openly and repeatedly advocates discrimination: by religion in the form of a ban on Muslims; by heritage in the form of disparaging remarks against Mexicans and Mexican-Americans; by gender in the form of misogynist attacks on female critics, opponents and their families. He often uses bullying and intimidation. This direct assault on the dignity of our fellow humans has no place in a healthy society. In addition, it undermines our diverse health care workforce and harms the relationship between patient and doctor.



Lastly, Mr. Trump has advocated purposefully killing the innocent families of terrorists and supports expanding the use of torture. The intentional murder of civilians in wartime is a crime against humanity, and such barbarism, like torture, shows a chilling indifference to the sanctity of human life. Mr. Trump, with his callous attitude and impulsive tendency to lash out at adversaries, cannot be allowed to be commander-in-chief and control the nuclear arsenal.



We face massive challenges in health care today, from controlling costs and improving the quality and equity of care to tackling emerging epidemics like opioid abuse and the Zika virus. Mr. Trump has consistently demonstrated himself to be an unstable, discriminatory, and anti-science candidate, and we fear he will deliver a setback to our current progress in health care, impair our ability to tackle new issues, demean our patients, and potentially prove catastrophic to health and well-being. In this roller coaster election season, the stakes are too serious to simply hope for the best. We must act.

Aaron Stupple is a physician in Boston. He is part of a community of doctors who are invested in medicine as a tool to support social justice.

A list of signatories to the petition and other information is available at: https://goo.gl/forms/TWZBHwHqynqIZMcY2

Have something to say about this topic? Use the comments to share your thoughts, and stay informed when readers reply to your comments by using the Notification Settings (in blue) just below.