Medics do climate

Oct 19, 2011
Bishop Hill in Bureaucrats, Greens, Health

Fiona Godlee, the editor of the British Medical Journal, has penned an editorial that reads, if not as the longest suicide note in history, then at least as a suicide note written by someone with a bit more time on their hands than they need to get the job done.

The editorial was prompted by a recent BMJ conference about the "Health and Security Perspectives of Climate Change", and this is what Ms Godlee has to say about it.

The greatest risk to human health is neither communicable nor non-communicable disease, it is climate change. Saying this, as I and others have started doing at conferences, seems to take a certain courage. We’ve been emboldened by clear statements from WHO’s director general Margaret Chan and from the Lancet (www.thelancet.com/climate-change). But this week, at a meeting hosted by the BMJ in collaboration with an extraordinary alliance of organisations (http://climatechange.bmj.com, doi:10.1136/bmj.d6775), it became clear that we are going to have to get braver still.

Apparently people trust doctors and soldiers more than other professionals. It's hard to imagine that respect lasting much longer when the money the public puts into healthcare and defence ends up paying for this kind of thing.

Article originally appeared on (http://www.bishop-hill.net/).