The Telegraph reports that “Doctors should talk to patients about climate change, say health leaders”:
A new green toolkit produced by the Royal College of Physicians tells its members they are “uniquely placed” to raise the issue in consultations and that they should “repeat it often”.
The guidance, which is can be found on the royal college’s website, also tells doctors to work from home on non-clinical shifts and offer remote consultations “where clinically appropriate” to cut emissions from commuting.
They should remain alert to “eco-distress”, depression or anxiety a patient may be suffering because of the changing climate, the document adds.
Critics branded the guidance, which is 11 pages long, “virtue signalling” and warned it could lead to diagnoses being missed.
The comment most recommended by Telegraph readers is this:
Mark Smith
Utterly utterly mad. When guidance like this is issued you know the current system is beyond repair. When patient get 10minutes with a GP, there’s little time to get a proper diagnosis and 5 of those minutes will be to receive a sermon. While the NHS is falling to bits we get this.
closely followed by this:
Andrew Bunting
Speaking as a doctor I find this diabolical.
Who has time on their hands to come up with such tosh?
In the science fiction stories of the sixties Captains of spaceships often had to defer to Political Commissars who were on board to ensure party loyalty. A trope of political interference in practical matters.
Nowadays Doctors will be subject to political scrutiny too – but there are far more surgeries than space ships so they will just have to give themselves a good talking if they fail to exercise politically correct diagnostics.
There is no observational evidence of a climate crisis, and no good theoretical grounds for expecting one due to our CO2 emissions. Yet such has been the success of decades of scare stories and superficial ‘science’ that uncounted numbers of climate scare fanatics are to be found in influential positions. Their facile opportunism will surely be exposed over the next few decades,but in the meantime we must expect their nonsense to continue to pop up all over the place.
I think the great Paul Marks will be able to articulate this far more clearly than I can but this is what Frankfurt School Marxism is about. There can be no escape from the revolution. To have total control you have to control totally and this is part of this. I’d also add the old maxim that there is no rest for the wicked but sadly while they are on the Earth that is also true.
I am not remotely original in pointing out that this stuff amounts to a religion. It gets everywhere, like Japanese knotweed.
I forget the exact quote but in FA Hayek’s The Constitution of Liberty, he writes about the dangers of State-run medicine, and the sinister uses to which it can be put. The people doing this don’t think what they are doing is evil or stupid, but that only adds to the risks.
So bloodtests are to be avoided? Seriously, what the f**k?
Change the GP pay structure to “per treatment” as opposed to “per registered patient” and see how far their concern for the planet really goes.
Mind you that’s never going to happen is it? Now get outside and start banging that saucepan.
Dear Doctor,
I know there is a long cancer waiting list and high ante-natal death rates at the moment, but what is the absorption spectrum of CO2 in the infrared? And how much energy does it absorb given its concentration in the atmosphere? (Senator Kennedy asking some basic questions to a climate activist).
I went to see my GP for the first time in 8 years (i.e. no contact at all in the interim) a couple of months ago. I was surprised that there were no questions about lifestyle, alcohol intake etc., he was a bit peeved that I’d ‘stored up’ a few issues for such a short consultation and I said well that’s 8 years worth of time saved for others.
Often? I don’t recall that. Can you remind us all with some examples, please?
It was the same with Covid – no interest in Early Treatments (other than to mock and smear them) in spite of their success in some other countries. And conformist support for the Covid “vaccines” that have killed or injured many people – to the utter indifference of the establishment.
A healer is supposed to have a direct relationship with their individual patient – the individual patient is supposed to be the only concern of the healer.
We have destroyed that relationship – and replaced it with professional bodies, and bureaucratic structures (government, “professional” or Corporate – for the Corporations are no good either) – both government (in the United Kingdom) and Corporate (the United States).
The person paying the healer is no longer, directly, the patient – and bureaucratic bodies can destroy the life of any doctor who dissents from establishment fads and fashions.
Now we have “Racism is a Public Health Emergency” and “Climate Change – the war on C02”.
As well as the vicious pushing of the “Trans” cult on children.
Oh, FFS!
They should remain alert to “eco-distress”, depression or anxiety a patient may be suffering because of the changing climate.
So, a fake disaster is manufactured and then they then use it to justify their role? I know a woman who needed medical help recently because she broke an ankle. She did this because the road was pot-holed to buggery. Nothing to do with climate but a lot to do with government spending money on meaningless virtue signals rather on the basics. Was I surprised the lady copped an unfortunate one? No. It is the street I live on and walking or driving it is a roll of the dice.
Well, I have read that some doctors do order more tests (blood, MRI, etc) than are strictly necessary, out of excess caution and to avoid lawsuits. But it seems virtually certain that government pressure to test less will result in poorer outcomes for patients, and that sooner or later “climate change” will be used as a cover for cutting government health care costs.
It’s one more in a series of worthless political tasks for busy people. Sadly, some of those busy people are achingly eager to do gov’s bidding.
In the US, docs started in with the constant exam-room question of “do you have guns in the house”, or, to the kids, “do your parents have any guns?”
My then-14-year-old son started enthusiastically describing my last purchase, extolling the crisp trigger action of it, before the doc shut him down.
So, doc brings me into the exam room and starts to lecture me about the inappropriateness of this, and the danger of guns. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that 14-year-old was a better shot than I was with that gun so far, and that the gun in question was two feet from him, on my belt. I’m sure he would have got the vapors.
And, we were there because of son’s snowboarding crash and painful foot. Doc had time to do the gun thing, but missed the fact that son had a broken bone in his foot. Sent us home, but the foot stayed painful, so the next doc a week later found it. But at least first doc asked the important questions!
“In the science fiction stories of the sixties Captains of spaceships often had to defer to Political Commissars”
pst314 – don’t know about the sixties but an example from the nineties would be David Weber’s Honor Harrington series, e.g. “In Enemy Hands”. Good stuff.
@Barbarus
You’re not the first to recommend David Weber, although I don’t really know anything about his books.
I’m mostly reading nonfiction these days.
And the sixties was sixty years ago, which seriously reduces how detailed my memory is. Oh well.
What the heck is a “health leader”, anyway?
It’s like a “thought leader”, with more pretension.
Bobby b,
You still have male doctors in the USA? How quaint. Next you’ll be telling us you have male teachers as well.
Man made climate change has to be promoted on all fronts as it dawns on more and more people that it’s bollocks. They won’t be able to hide the truth for ever but presumably all those on the climate change gravy train want to keep it going until they themselves can retire.
Stonyground – I suspect that the United Kingdom will be the last country on Earth to continue the hysteria.
The newly elected government is fanatically committed to it (even more than the previous government was) and has a large majority in the House of Commons.
So it will be five years before there will be any real re-examination of policy – the war on C02 emissions will be intense in the United Kingdom, even as China and other nations continue to increase C02 emissions.
This is one of the factors (only one – there are other factors, such as the vast Credit Money bubble I bang on about – and the endless increase in government spending, taxation and regulation) that lead me to conclude that there will not be much of a British economy left in five years.
Bad though the last government was – the new government is worse, on this subject and on all other subjects.
I repeat – it is unlikely there will be much of a British economy left in five years.
This is all targeted dysfunction, it’s Bezmenovian, and it’s happening all over the British public sector.
…but not, implicitly, to distress, depression or anxiety a patient may be suffering because he is being gaslighted by the Big State. Here’s the Big Marxist Book of False Consciousness for you, Mac, says the Doctor, I’d get reading.
As employers we had that a lot throughout Covid lockdowns and the times in between – anxiety about Covid was something we had to be aware of and address across the workforce – anxiety stemming from causes quite opposite was not even referenced. This increased the anxiety of the Covid- and lockdown-sceptical. Whom the State would destroy, It first makes mad.
This tricksy little insertion into an official question of an untested premise disguised as a fact appears deliberate: it could be wielded very widely.
“Anxious about Long Covid – that cruelly-selective ailment that preys disproportionately on the public sector and on readers of The Guardian? Help is here!”
“Anxious about the increasing gap between the rich and the poor? Longing for the halcyon days of 1848, or 1917, or 1945 – when being bottom of the pile wasn’t nearly so tough as it is nowadays? The doctor will see you now.”
“Anxious about structural racism? The NHS structure has got your back.”
If I were a doctor and a patient told me he was worried that the earth was literally boiling, I’d like to be able to tell him to go for a walk in the park and feed the squirrels. In previous times I’d probably have been minded to give his bumps a feel . But it appears the Big State is doing my diagnostics for me.