{"id":337261,"date":"2024-07-23T08:41:36","date_gmt":"2024-07-23T06:41:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=337261"},"modified":"2024-07-23T08:41:38","modified_gmt":"2024-07-23T06:41:38","slug":"climate-warriors-are-colonising-medicine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=337261","title":{"rendered":"Climate Warriors are Colonising Medicine"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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From The Daily Sceptic<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

BY\u00a0BEN PILE<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This week, the Royal College of Physicians (RCP) published a \u2018Green Physician Toolkit<\/a>\u2018. The toolkit from perhaps the world\u2019s oldest professional organisation, founded by royal charter in the early 16th century, has caused an eruption of incredulous comment<\/a>. Controversy has been created by the fact that, as well as the planet-saving advice such as \u201cGenerate less waste\u201d and \u201cLimit the environmental impact of travel\u201d, the toolkit suggested doctors \u201cReduce unnecessary prescribing\u201d and \u201cLimit diagnostic activities\u201d. 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\u2019 founding principles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The idea of a climate \u201ctoolkit\u201d for doctors may sound familiar. That\u2019s because it\u2019s not a new idea. Earlier this year<\/a> the WHO published precisely the same thing \u2013 a \u201ctoolkit\u201d that the WHO claimed is \u201cdesigned to equip health and care workers with the knowledge and confidence to effectively communicate about climate change and health\u201d. 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\u2019s missive was an injunction \u2013 holy green orders \u2013 to proselytise. And now it seems that the RCP has done the WHO\u2019s bidding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is not much more to say about the RCP\u2019s reproduction of the WHO\u2019s 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\u2019s first and only duty is towards the patient\u2019s health, not the planet\u2019s \u201chealth\u201d, which should be of no concern to doctors and nurses, nor their managers. The tension between these two putative beneficiaries of clinicians\u2019 work speaks to the antagonism posited by environmentalism between \u201cNature\u201d 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\u2019s and RCP\u2019s toolkits really are a green utilitarian \u2018greater good\u2019 injunction to begin rationing medicine for Gaia\u2019s benefit. That tension is intractable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here on the Daily Sceptic<\/em>, our in-house doctor advises<\/a> 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\u2019s 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\u2019 cult-like behaviour. And the RCP2 and GMC are not the only institutions of medicine that are now annexes of the Green Blob.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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