Tag: Doctors

Climate Warriors are Colonising Medicine

This week, the Royal College of Physicians (RCP) published a ‘Green Physician Toolkit‘. The toolkit from perhaps the world’s oldest professional organisation, founded by royal charter in the early 16th century, has caused an eruption of incredulous comment. Controversy has been created by the fact that, as well as the planet-saving advice such as “Generate less waste” and “Limit the environmental impact of travel”, the toolkit suggested doctors “Reduce unnecessary prescribing” and “Limit diagnostic activities”.

From The Daily Sceptic

BY BEN PILE

This week, the Royal College of Physicians (RCP) published a ‘Green Physician Toolkit‘. The toolkit from perhaps the world’s oldest professional organisation, founded by royal charter in the early 16th century, has caused an eruption of incredulous comment. Controversy has been created by the fact that, as well as the planet-saving advice such as “Generate less waste” and “Limit the environmental impact of travel”, the toolkit suggested doctors “Reduce unnecessary prescribing” and “Limit diagnostic activities”. Journalists have been asking whether the RCP is asking doctors to put green ideology before care. But worse, the toolkit is evidence of a deadly virus spreading throughout professional institutions. This vicious pathogen erodes professional standards and ethics and dissolves institutions’ founding principles.

The idea of a climate “toolkit” for doctors may sound familiar. That’s because it’s not a new idea. Earlier this year the WHO published precisely the same thing – a “toolkit” that the WHO claimed is “designed to equip health and care workers with the knowledge and confidence to effectively communicate about climate change and health”. But the toolkit seemed more designed for GCSE students than for people with advanced degrees in medicine. Trite, condescending, shallow in detail and containing conjecture in place of fact, the WHO’s missive was an injunction – holy green orders – to proselytise. And now it seems that the RCP has done the WHO’s bidding.

There is not much more to say about the RCP’s reproduction of the WHO’s toolkit itself that has not already been said. Suffice it to say that if doctors are running too many diagnostic tests, or prescribing drugs unnecessarily, then these are problems in their own right, and the doctor’s first and only duty is towards the patient’s health, not the planet’s “health”, which should be of no concern to doctors and nurses, nor their managers. The tension between these two putative beneficiaries of clinicians’ work speaks to the antagonism posited by environmentalism between “Nature” and humanity. On the green view, industrial and economic development, which have indubitably raised living standards, are unsustainable at current rates. The greater good can only be served by limiting or reversing that development. And that has to have consequences for human welfare. In other words, the WHO’s and RCP’s toolkits really are a green utilitarian ‘greater good’ injunction to begin rationing medicine for Gaia’s benefit. That tension is intractable.

Here on the Daily Sceptic, our in-house doctor advises that most physicians will simply ignore the RCP toolkit. But the danger, he adds, is in the institutional capture made possible by just a small number of administrators, and perhaps people with clinical expertise, taking the WHO and RCP’s work at face value. Already, notes the doctor, the Royal College of Psychiatrists (RCP2) and the General Medical Council (GMC) have made climate interventions. And the problem must be taken seriously: institutional capture cannot be challenged by doctors merely ignoring their colleagues’ cult-like behaviour. And the RCP2 and GMC are not the only institutions of medicine that are now annexes of the Green Blob.

Founded in 1823, the Lancet is yet another British medical institution. Though it is privately owned, it is a prestigious weekly journal that publishes research and commentary on a range of public policies, sometimes only very loosely connected with medicine. According to its Editor Richard Horton, “the climate emergency that we are facing today is the most important existential crisis facing the human species”. It is nonsense, of course. There is no science, for example, produced by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to support the claim that climate change is an “existential crisis”, much less evidence showing how that crisis compares to other risk factors. Even the RCP’s toolkit, for example, claims that globally, climate change “is projected [by the IPCC] to cause an excess of 250,000 deaths per year by 2050”. A quarter of a million deaths each year is certainly nothing to be blasé about. But on a global scale, how does it compare to other risk factors? Data on mortality risk compiled by Oxford University’s Our World in Data website put that figure into perspective.

The IPCC itself says those annual deaths in 2050 will be caused by “heat, undernutrition, malaria and diarrheal disease”. Horton is simply wrong. Grotesquely wrong. And the IPCC itself is likely also wrong. Deaths from malaria are half what they were in the early 2000s – down by more than three times the IPCC’s estimate of climate-related deaths in 2050. Diarrheal diseases claimed 1.17 million lives in 2021 – a fall of 1.76 million since 1990. That’s seven times the 2050 mortality estimate. 778,091 were killed by nutritional deficiencies in 1980. Mortality from that cause in 2021 was more than two thirds lower, at 222,274 – again, by a multiple of the number of climate-related fatalities predicted for 2050. And even if one could make an argument that climate change could negatively influence such grim statistics, the fatalities attributed to Nth-order effects of climate change are much lower-order consequences of poverty. Solve the problem of poverty – a far better understood and far less intractable ‘problem’ than climate change – and the “existential threat” of climate change goes away.

But is Horton interested in facts, or is the notion of an “existential threat” serving some other purpose? Horton goes on to claim that, “since medicine is all about protecting and strengthening the human species, it should be absolutely foundational to the practice of what we do, every single day”, and so “doctors and all health professionals have a responsibility and obligation to engage in all kinds of non-violent social protest to address the climate emergency”. If Horton was truly interested in human welfare over ideological partisanship, he would surely have commissioned studies showing how the progress of developing and emerging economies in eliminating poverty had been dependent on fossil fuels – including the half of the world’s population that is dependent on synthetic fertiliser, produced from natural gas. But instead, the Lancet produces an annual report called ‘Lancet Countdown‘ which emphasises false, misleading and unscientific claims in order to influence political decisions, rather than inform wider public debate.

Another prestigious organisation is the British Medical Association (BMA) – a trade union for physicians, founded in the early 19th Century – which also publishes a weekly journal, the British Medical Journal (BMJ). And the BMA and BMJ, too, have been on quite a journey from their founding purpose to green ideological activism. In 2016, the two organisations helped to set up the U.K. Health Alliance on Climate Change (UKHACC) – an association of 48 member organisations in healthcare, including the Association of Anaesthetists, the British Dental Association, the Paediatric Critical Care Society and many more.

The UKHACC, though nearly a decade old, and housed at the BMA’s address in Tavistock Square, London, recently became a charitable organisation, but has no shame in explaining its purpose as political lobbying. It published a manifesto in the run-up to the 2024 U.K. General Election and clearly states its intention to “influence decision makers to strengthen policies responding to the climate and ecological crisis”, among other equally questionable things. When the General Medical Council’s (GMC) Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service suspended Just Stop Oil protester Dr. Sarah Benn, following her criminal prosecution, the UKHACC lobbied the GMC, demanding that it “avoid being on the wrong side of history”. The UKHACC appears not to believe that doctors should face any consequences for criminal acts, despite their privileged and respected positions in society.

But what do the doctors, nurses, dentists and other healthcare professionals who are members of the 48 associations that comprise the UKHACC membership think of their representative organisations’ commitment to this political campaigning organisation? Was there a vote? Was there a debate? What happens to members of the BMA itself, or the UKHACC’s membership, who want to disagree? UKHACC boasts that is “an alliance of U.K.-based health organisations representing about one million health professionals”, providing “leadership, and amplifying the voice of health professionals”. But what is the substance of this association?

With no debates, no votes and apparently no deliberation, the “alliance” looks less like an association of people with expertise than something resembling the Midwich Cuckoos – Midwit Cuckolds, perhaps. The alignment of so many professional organisations with such ease should strike us as suspicious.

The point of a professional association, be it teachers, lawyers, architects or clinicians – all of whom have been drawn into the climate wars – is surely to reciprocate and secure the trust that society places in these professionals. They are exceptional, and so held to higher standards by these self-governing organisations of peers. But when we look closely at the work, for example, of the Lancet and its Editor, we find extremely high-pitched rhetoric and unscientific claims where we would expect expertise. Back in 2020, I asked Horton to explain how he had determined that climate change is “the most important existential crisis”, compared with other mortality risks. No reply was forthcoming. I have also exchanged views with doctors defending the Lancet’s, RCP’s and UKHACC’s interventions. Their replies are invariably little more than to call me a “denier”. Their views, then, are no better substantiated than those of a bloke at the pub. And he has a didgeridoo and a dog on a string, the worse for wear on so much cider and ketamine.

The point of the professional association, therefore, seems less about enforcing standards than lowering the standards expected of “professionals”. Rather than vehicles through which peers hold each other to account, putting the reputation of the profession above everything else, the associations have become mechanisms for enforcing political dogma. The goal of professional associations like the RCP now is, in part, to leverage the trust the public places in medical professionals to make green propaganda more likely to be believed. That’s a long way from their original scientific ethos.

The condition of this infection is anomie – “instability resulting from a breakdown of standards and values or from a lack of purpose or ideals”. Only doctors – those who have yet to be infected by it – can stop the spread. But it cannot be stopped by ignoring it and hoping it will get better. Doctors must form their own new associations, to argue that it is enough to be a doctor, and that aspiring to be a planet-saving superhero risks undermining the commitments that doctors make: make doctors doctors again. Physicians, heal thyselves! 

Why is the WHO Asking Doctors to Lie to Promote Climate Alarm?

Last month, everybody’s favourite intergovernmental agency, the World Health Organisation (WHO), published a “new toolkit empowering health professionals to tackle climate change”. The toolkit is the latest attempt to enlist one of the most trusted professions into the climate war.

From The Daily Sceptic

BY BEN PILE

Last month, everybody’s favourite intergovernmental agency, the World Health Organisation (WHO), published a “new toolkit empowering health professionals to tackle climate change”. The toolkit is the latest attempt to enlist one of the most trusted professions into the climate war. But not only is this transparently ideological and condescending ‘toolkit’ lacking in fact, it requires ‘healthcare professionals’ to use their authority to eschew science and lie to their patients and politicians. The climate war is, after all, political.

The problem for climate warriors of all kinds since the climate scare story emerged in the 1980s and became orthodoxy in the 1990s and 2000s has been the rapid improvement of all human welfare metrics the world over. On the one hand, all life on Earth and the collapse of civilisation hangs in the balance – that is supposedly the implication of data that shows the atmosphere has got warmer. But on the other hand, people living in economies at all levels of development are today living longer, healthier, wealthier and safer lives than any preceding generation. The era of ‘global boiling’, as UN Secretary General António Guterres put it, also happens to be the era in which unprecedented social development has occurred.

That is a paradox if you accept the green premise that economic development comes at the expense of the climate. The UN, which has staked its authority on being able to address ‘global’ issues such as environmental degradation, is committed to defending the ‘global boiling’ narrative. But, at the same time, actively trying to retard the development of low-income countries risks undermining its authority in the developing world.

The statement made by the WHO’s introduction to its new toolkit epitomises the feeble efforts to square this circle, which try to spin interference in the development of low-income countries as being for their benefit:

Our world is witnessing a concerning trend of warming temperatures, extreme weather events, water and food security challenges and deteriorating air quality. The frequency and intensity of these events are surpassing the capacity of both natural and human systems to respond effectively, resulting in far-reaching consequences for health.

Surprisingly, for a ‘toolkit’ aimed at people such as doctors, who have a proven capacity to understand scientific literature, the toolkit offers little evidence in support of these claims. It says that “changing weather patterns and extreme weather events can reduce crop yields, potentially leading to food insecurity and malnutrition” and that the “breeding window for mosquito-borne disease is broadening due to changing weather patterns”. The reference for both of these claims is given in a footnote, which provides a link to the 2023 IPCC AR6 Synthesis Report, which says in relation to the first claim:

The occurrence of climate-related food-borne and water-borne diseases has increased (very high confidence). The incidence of vector-borne diseases has increased from range expansion and/or increased reproduction of disease vectors (high confidence).

But dig a little deeper into the IPCC’s discussion on vector-borne diseases and you find the following figure depicting mortality risk of various climate-related factors for six regions of the world.

As the data clearly show, since 1990 there have been radical reductions in mortality caused by malaria, malnutrition, diarrhoeal disease, natural disasters and exposure to temperature extremes. The only departure from those trends is dengue, which in any case is of far less significance than the other factors, claiming approximately just 1.75 lives per 100,000 per year, compared with malaria, which claims more than 50.

How do these data compare with the WHO’s claim that “the frequency and intensity of these events are surpassing the capacity of both natural and human systems to respond effectively, resulting in far-reaching consequences for health”, and the “occurrence of climate-related food-borne and water-borne diseases” and the “incidence of vector-borne diseases” have increased? They do not compare. In Africa, deaths from malnutrition have fallen by three quarters between 1990 and 2017. Diarrhoeal disease mortality has fallen by two thirds in the same period. Malaria deaths have halved. Consequently, more than 10,000 fewer infants die in the world each day than died each day in 1990.

This is, or ought to be, all the more remarkable to anyone who tracks developmental data, because of the WHO’s longstanding attempt to link these diseases of poverty to climate change. In the 2002 World Health Report, the WHO claimed that 154,000 deaths were attributable to climate change, almost exclusively in High Mortality Developing Countries (HMDCs) – a figure obtained by estimating climate change’s impact on each of these diseases of poverty. Yet despite the radical progress that has been shown since 2000, the WHO has shown no interest either in revising its understanding of climate change or in developing an understanding of what has driven these improvements in global health, in spite of its name. Instead, it has doubled down on the climate-health narrative.

A similar ‘paradox’ can be shown by comparing the WHO’s statements on food security with other UN agencies’ data. There is no evidence of climate change adversely affecting agricultural production in vulnerable economies.

Yet the WHO’s toolkit urges “health professionals” to “communicate” the urgent climate crisis to ordinary people and to use their authority to influence politics:

Things you could say to a policymaker: Climate change is here now, and I am already seeing the impacts on my patients’ health. The health of some people is affected more severely, including children and elderly people, disadvantaged communities, remote communities, and people with disabilities or chronic illness.

People are living longer and healthier lives. Infant mortality is way down. Far fewer people are living in poverty. But the WHO wants doctors and nurses to claim that the opposite is true. And worse than that, the toolkit advises those doctors and nurses not to debate:

Don’t debate the science Don’t get caught up in conversations that question climate science. It’s not up for debate. If conversation veers into this territory, redirect it back to your professional expertise and the links between climate change and health.

But there are no “links between climate change and health”. And if there appear to be, these local or regional health trends run counter to the global trends. Therefore, there must be a better explanation than ‘climate change’. It may well be that extreme weather afflicts a place, or even that unusual weather causes the population of that place a number of problems, as it always has. But ‘extreme weather’ is both rare and as yet not attributable to climate change, on the IPCC’s own analysis. And so, if small changes in weather are coincident with negative economic change or health metrics, the cause is less likely to be meteorological than political in nature. For example, incompetence, especially that of undemocratic regimes’ bureaucracies, is very often the cause of hunger, thirst and the lack of basic services. And in their haste to find politically expedient correlations between weather and welfare metrics, researchers fail to consider alternative causes, despite the knowledge that humans are far more sensitive to economic forces than to nature’s whims.

Don’t believe me? Well, the evidence is extremely stark. Whereas the WHO wants to persuade doctors to ignore science to claim there are “links between climate change and health”, by far the strongest predictor of health is in fact wealth. Accordingly, the WHO 2002 report found practically no climate-related deaths in ‘Low Mortality Developing Countries’ and ‘Developing Countries’. There are no deaths “from climate change” where malaria, malnutrition and diarrhoea are eliminated by rising income levels.

Seen from this perspective, the WHO’s mobilisation of health professionals looks very much like a political campaign against wealth. Only such an ideological – and anti-science – aversion to wealth could put such emphasis on the link between health and weather, because whereas doctors can and should say that income and health are linked, the WHO presses them not to: the best thing that can be given to poorer people is ‘stable weather’, apparently, not higher incomes. The toolkit even anticipates this criticism, advising people how to answer the argument that “climate action is perceived as detrimental to the economy”. According to the WHO, this is “an untrue and unhelpful perception held by some people… which was repeated by some businesses and governments to delay the implementation of climate solutions”. A conspiracy theory, no less, which is supported only by the highly dubious claim that “for every dollar spent on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, approximately $2 are saved in health costs”.

Any doctor who took such an extraordinary and unevidenced claim about a new drug at face value and promptly started prescribing it to their patients would have his or her licence taken away. Britain, for instance, spends around £10 billion per year on subsidising its green electricity transition alone, yet there is no evidence of the NHS budget benefiting by £20bn. An analysis of Germany’s Energiewende estimates the annual cost at €45 billion, yet per capita expenditure on healthcare rose from €3,500 in 2009 to €5,700 in 2021 – an increase of 62%. Moreover, Germany’s green deindustrialisation has come at a heavy price, signalling to the world that not even a first-tier industrialised and wealthy nation can survive such environmentalism, with far reaching consequences looming for similar policies in the rest of Europe. The country’s status as Europe’s deep-green policy champion has passed and now half of Germans believe that lower prices should be put before emissions-reduction policies. German tractors, and for that matter French and Dutch ones as well, aren’t heading to the capital’s streets to protest against green economic and health miracles. The WHO’s claim is simply mad.

The reason the WHO’s toolkit is so bereft of evidence and logic is because it’s just political propaganda. The document credits authors who are not medical doctors and climate scientists, but psychologists at the Centre for Climate Change Communication located at George Mason University, led by Dr. Ed Maibach. As I have pointed out previously in the Daily Sceptic, climate shrinks’ unwelcome intrusion into climate politics does nothing to improve debate and only serves to antagonise increasingly intense conflicts. And their involvement in producing the WHO’s toolkit is no exception. This remote, conflicted intergovernmental agency claims the authority of ‘experts’, but its guidance instructs doctors to eschew science, evidence and debate – it literally advises them not to engage in debate – and instead to promulgate green ideology: the mythical claim that there are ‘links’ between climate and health, that the green ‘transition’ will improve health and that complying with emissions targets is cheap as chips.

The toolkit may give ‘healthcare professionals’ the justification to lie to the public and politicians, but that’s not ‘empowerment’, it’s just fibs. And its recruitment of psychologists to mobilise doctors and nurses as the instruments of a political agenda is yet more evidence of the urgent need to dismantle the WHO, for the sake of billions of people’s health and wealth.

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