Dr. Milton Wolf, a Tea Party candidate in Kansas, is under fire for allegedly posting X-rays of gunshot victims on Facebook and joking about them. Perhaps he forgot that the Internet is not a very forgiving place, especially when you’re running for Senate.
In an interview with the Topeka Capital-Journal, Wolf responded to the criticism about his posts. Reporter Tim Carpenter asked if Wolf thought what he did was professional, nothing that Wolf seemed like he was joking about the injuries.
“You wonder about images like this being put out on the Internet,” Carpenter said. “And really, the posts are intended — it’s a joke.”
“It is no joke about taking care of patients,” Wolf responded.
In one of the Facebook pictures referenced in the interview, Wolf posted the X-rays of a dead patient and captioned it, “One of my all-time favorites. From my residency days there was a pretty active ‘knife and gun club’ at Truman Medical Center. What kind of gun blows somebody’s head completely off? I’ve got to get one of those.”
Wolf, who is challenging incumbent Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Ka.) in Kansas’ GOP primary, defended the criticisms against him.
“Of course you know I’m an author of medical imaging,” said the doctor, who has written medical software in the past. “So of course, one of the things you do is you get releases from patients that way you could release the images.”
Wolf said he had the authority to release the images and told the reporter that as long as the people are not identified, it was fine to post the images without their permission. He pointed to textbooks as an example of that kind of image use.
Watch the interview here:
