Most readers will be aware of the massive treatment backlog in the NHS. It is a matter of grave concern to all doctors, even recently retired ones like myself. So, imagine my excitement to discover that the Royal College of Physicians has found the time to produce a ‘Green Physician Toolkit’. I’m sure this important initiative will go a long way to solving the many problems in our beloved NHS. Interested readers can download the advice here.
Sadly, I must report that this brochure has not been uniformly well received by my colleagues. One contributor to a GP website went so far as to ask whether the document was a parody. On the upside it does indeed contain many amusing sections.
Knowing how popular remote consultations are with the general public, readers will be delighted to hear that the Royal College advises doctors to conduct as much interaction with patients as possible by virtual means, and goes on to advocate that doctors work from home whenever feasible to reduce carbon emissions from travelling. How very convenient – for the profession, if not for patients.
There are useful pointers in how to go about communicating concerns about climate change and health. The Royal College says doctors are “uniquely placed as a trusted member of the community to discuss public health threats with patients”. I’m not entirely sure how one might raise the subject in the consultation room. “Good morning, Mrs. Smith. I wonder, have you ever considered the impact of climate change on your breast cancer/diabetes/rheumatoid arthritis?” I imagine Mrs. Smith would shortly be seeking a second opinion.
To help with the tricky matter of introducing climate change into a medical consultation, 10 top tips are provided from the WHO including “Talk about the health benefits of climate action”, “Keep your message simple and repeat it often”, “Talk about climate change during extreme weather events” and above all “Don’t debate the science”. God forbid!
Readers may be interested to follow the link to the WHO website and download the WHO ‘Green Health Toolkit’, which I suspect is where this advice originated – though the WHO’s guidance is an even more egregious misuse of medical professionalism, containing advice on how to use a position of trust to incite patients to climate activism and lobby journalists to spread green propaganda. I strongly encourage readers to examine this WHO handbook for themselves – the principles are directly derived from “information operations” specifically designed to influence behaviour in populations by inculcating false beliefs.
According to the Royal College: “The U.K. will not be immune from the direct effects of extreme heat and flooding events, or the inevitable arrival of climate refugees.”
There then follows a helpful link to the Royal College of Psychiatrists webpage regarding “eco-anxiety” – a diagnosable condition prevalent amongst young people caused by alarmist nonsense about the “climate emergency”. This exhibits a simply stunning lack of awareness given that the type of hyperbole in the Green Physicians Toolkit is directly responsible for causing “eco-anxiety”.
Most doctors will simply ignore this nonsense and get on with their jobs, but there are serious risks lurking behind this relentless institutional propaganda.
Firstly, it demonstrates yet another professional body has been captured by climate alarmism – and no doubt the rest of the ‘woke’ agenda. The majority of doctors may ignore the Green Physician Toolkit, but I would bet money on a mandatory ‘Eco training’ module being introduced into annual appraisal assessments before long. Annual appraisal and mandatory training in medicine has expanded hugely over the last decade and now includes a compulsory module on Diversity and Inclusion. It can only be a matter of time before the medical training industry spots a lucrative opportunity to add to its portfolio of time consuming and pointless ‘e-learning’ products.
Secondly, tucked away in the corner of one page, the Green Physician Toolkit notes that the General Medical Council has included advice to doctors relating to the importance of considering environmental matters in day-to-day practice. How long will it be I wonder before registered physicians are banned from expressing views “orthogonal to the orthodoxy” in public fora like social media? (Hat tip Sunetra Gupta.) In the revised edit on “Good medical practice” issued in January this year, the GMC explicitly warned doctors that comments on any form of social media now come under its jurisdiction. The mere threat of being investigated by the GMC is sufficient to silence most sceptical doctors.
I doubt it will stop there. The Royal College highlights several virtuous projects already underway in our ever more perfect NHS. Some doctors will see this as an opportunity to move into full time climate activism funded by the taxpayer. A chance to escape the tedium and hard grind at the clinical coalface by masquerading as an ‘eco lead’ or ‘climate change champion’ within their NHS organisation – for which they will be remunerated at the same rate of pay as their colleagues toiling away on the wards. To achieve sustainability in such posts, more output will be required, so one can expect multiple green initiatives to sprout up all over the sacred NHS – zero impact on the climate, but substantially increased friction in the working lives of coal face clinicians. The ratchet will tighten a couple of notches, making the real practice of medicine slightly less appealing.
In my recent reading I came across an appropriate quote from an 18th Century writer:
All religious sects, however they may differ in other points, agree in one, which is the pursuit of power, and this by the same progressive steps. Firstly, by imploring toleration, next claiming equality and then struggling for superiority over the rest.
Soame Jenyns, Disquisitions on certain subjects
Green Power does not just refer to Ed Miliband’s plan to cover Britain in windfarms. It’s also coming to your GP surgery.
Thank God I’ve retired.
The author, the Daily Sceptic’s in-house doctor, is a former NHS consultant, now retired.
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“Thank God I’ve retired.”
How many times have we read or thought that or “thank God I’m close to retirement”? Very sad. So many good people are being alienated from the world of work.
As an ex Civil Servant who took early retirement because I couldn’t stand the nonsense and chaos a minute longer, you have no idea how many times I have celebrated my decision in the past 8 years.
I reckon a significant reason for people deciding not to return to work after the Covid Tyranny is the imposition of the Woke Nonsense and politicisation of the workplace.
What’s in it for the loons running the RCP?
Virtue-signalling? Group think? Preferment? Work? Money?
All of the above probably, plus power and liking to think you’re saving the world
Stephen Dixon, Met Office spokesperson:
“The Met Office’s forecast for the first two weeks of August says there is a “slightly increased chance of more settled spells of weather”.
“However, there is still a substantial chance of other weather types too, with more changeable periods also likely.”
Mr Dixon adds: “Some models suggest a chance of more settled and warm weather in early August, though much will depend on the meteorological conditions closer to the time.”
So what do they suggest doctors do in the 10 minutes consult time? If the Met Office comes out with this garbage for August, we’re expected to believe they can predict the next 20-30 years! They can’t predict the next 5 minutes.
So August will be “changeable.” I suppose that does appear to mean “we haven’t got a clue,” but…
“there is a “slightly increased chance of more settled spells of weather”.
“However, there is still a substantial chance of other weather types too, with more changeable periods also likely.”
…obviously sounds a bit more $ciencey.
Another organisation creaming off taxpayers for a return of F A.
There are no “predictions” of climate moving forward, which is simply the average of weather over longer periods of time. There are “projections”. ————-Projections are what you get from putting speculations, assumptions, guesses and incomplete data and knowledge into a computer model. But guess what? So far all of the expensive climate models that governments use to make energy and climate policy have all been WRONG. They all project way more warming than has actually occurred. Real world warming is right at the bottom of a graph of all the model projections. The reason for this is that it is virtually impossible to model climate over longer periods of time like decades. Many of the parameters are poorly understood and all it needs is for one of those parameters to be wrong and it throws the entire model way out. Yet our Political Class lecture us daily about the “climate emergency” and base their energy policies that seek to take away affordable reliable energy (coal oil and gas) and replace it with expensive unreliable energy, which forces millions into fuel poverty, causes the price of everything to rise dramatically and forces our industrial base overseas where silly climate policies do not exist. Then once we have allowed places with no climate polices to manufacture everything and emit all the CO2 we used to emit, we buy those goods back and emit even more CO2 bringing those goods back to us. ———-GREEN is absurdity on stilts, and now that Labour have this huge majority, it is only going to become a GREEN Dictatorship. Our cars will go, our gas central heating will go, our holidays will go, meat will go. Heat Pumps and Smart meters will become compulsory, and all based on those phony “projections”.
It is an excuse to delay our diagnosis and treatment, so more of us die earlier. Or indeed to muck up the diagnosis completely. Too many of us you know- we can’t have that.
Correct.
The tory party self-immolated.
The NHS is to undergo a systematic destruction and yes the intention is to cause death on a massive scale.
Although in some respects the destruction of the NHS could actually improve health outcomes.
Great read 🙂
Interesting – went to WHO website using Brave, and it would not let me download that report without dropping my VPN.
403 Forbidden
When I was a Christian GP, the threat of striking off hung over me if I discussed faith or prayed with my patients, although there it was clearly directly significant to many people in the face of death, disability, depression and whatever. I can remember some very gratifying conversations, often initiated by patients themselves. The hospice movement (which we helped establish in our town), of course, was particularly sensitive to such a dimension.
The climate cult, though, has no direct bearing on the presenting problems of patients (apart, perhaps, from the odd climate alarmist in meltdown, who scarcely needs his climate awareness raised). And yet the professional bodies are actually urging doctors to proselytise on what is not even a proper religious, but an ideological, matter. As the writer says, it represents the capture of an institution.
It’s not far removed from, “Here’s a prescription, Mrs Jones – and don’t forget that Black Lives Matter, and that Trump’s/Farage’s white supremacism is the biggest threat to democracy.”
Environmentalism, especially as regarding the climate has become very much like a religion. The language used is shrouded in religious terminology. —–“Climate Apocalypse, Climate Armageddon” etc. Non believers are all “Heretics”. We are all sinners against the pristine environment that existed before humans despoiled the earth.
The pamphlet has a section entitled “Limit the environmental impact of travel”, so no overseas shots for you lot.
“Item 10 Don’t debate the science” They are not too sure of their ground then, are they?
I wonder how you go about getting a second opinion.
“coalface, and coal face”: oh dear, used twice there! They’ll try to educate you out of that, perhaps even ban it, or at least explain how bad the place was etc!
In teaching it was the “chalkface”, despite chalk having been displaced by smart whiteboards years previously!
It was much the same around 2005 in the teaching profession. At teacher re-education centres we were provided with toolkits such as “Aim: to discover why Doncaster might be a coastal resort by 2050”. Superficially this was just a bit of fun for classroom discussion in Geography: “don’t discuss The Science”. I don’t think many trainee teachers took “promoting Climate Awareness” seriously. However, it soon became apparent that any trainee teacher (or one, like me, sent for “professional development” in order to “refresh skills”) who did not buy into the “Global Warming” agenda, as it was then known, were metaphorically taken out and shot, by suspending qualifications decreed to be essential to the job. The same applied to some other agendas coming down from central government on race and gender. The teacher unions were no help to teachers facing cancellation: the unions themselves had already been infiltrated. “Thank God I was close to retirement.” The young teachers did not have my advantage.
“Don’t discuss the science”. ———That is because there is no way to falsify any of it which means that is really isn’t science at all.
Among other things, this Green Toolkit suggests/ demands that GPs tell people deemed to be vulnerable to being scared (small children, frail elderly, pregnant mothers and people with chronic conditions) that pollutants from ICE cars are very bad for their health and that they should avoid busy roads and wear masks outside because of this.
That’s considerably more sinister than parody.
Fumes for cars are indeed bad for health. But nor because of the CO2 emissions. CO2 is a harmless trace gas that is odourless, colourless and invisible. Sailors in Nuclear Submarines are exposed for months at a time to levels of CO2 10 times higher than in the atmosphere and it poses them no problems. So if doctors are to lecture about fumes from cars their lecturing has nothing to do with the CO2 that is alleged to be changing the climate.
Was this comment forced to do an emergency landing here? Or am I supposed to assume you agree that the frail and elderly, young children, pregnant women and people with pre-existing health conditions should wear masks outside because of the grave danger ICE cars pose to their health?
Just in case you do: Due to ever stricter emission regulations for cars and also, due to technical changes, principally, introduction of catalytic converters and Diesel engines whose main gaseous emissions are indeed CO₂, car emissions are significantly less poisionous than they used to be 30 – 40 years ago when nobody even considered wearing masks because of this.
NB: Feel free to wrap as many useless layers of cloth around your head “for protection” as you’re comfortable with. But don’t employ baseless fear-mongering to nudge others into doing that.
I apologise if it seems I disagree with you——-I don’t. I am simply pointing out that in life there are many things that are not really good for you. When it comes to cars, it is clear there are risks. But there is risk in everything. We could always get rid of cars and buy a horse, but the horse could kick you to death. So ultimately what I am saying is that there are risks everywhere but it is about balancing the risks, and overall fossil fuels and cars area a huge benefit to society.
The UN Sustainable Development Agenda has filtered its way down through all governments of the world. Some like the EU and UK take it far more seriously than others and impose draconian climate measures on their citizens. The UK is one that has forced itself in law to reduce emissions with the 2019 Net Zero amendment to the Climate Change act of 2008. From these governments there is this top down coercion of all institutions aided by a bought and paid for media who keep the manufactured “climate emergency” in the minds of the viewers on a daily basis.
—- All Local Councils take it all onboard and can be seen to indulge in all manner of silliness, like offering bicycle schemes to work places so employees can leave their car at home. My local paper has simply become a Party Political Broadcast for the Green Agenda, advising readers to have “staycations” instead of flying abroad or to stop eating meat etc, all to reduce emissions. Everyone is to be coerced into pretending to save the planet, except an unsuspecting public mostly don’t realise that all of this eco socialist crap has nothing whatsoever to do with the planet. The planet is simply the excuse for the agenda.———— It is ofcourse no surprise to see doctors given a remit to indoctrinate their patients. Green Tyranny permeates the entire fabric of society. The whole thing STINKS.
While the in house Doctor’s tone here is one of half amused surprise, this guidance raises very serious questions about the College’s understanding of the scientific method. There has been much press comment on the irrelevance of the guidance, with which I can only agree. But the whole thing is based on the uncritical assumption that climate change is due to CO2 emissions and fails to understand that the evidence base for such an assumption is absent. This is a more serious basic concern than whether doctors should be ramming propaganda down patients’ throats when it is irrelevant to their clinical needs.
As a Fellow of the College I dissociate myself from the document and am writing to it to request that it is withdrawn.
Remote consultations as every rational doctor knows are only useful as triage. As a consultation they are useless and dangerous for patient and doctor. If there can be no laying on of hands ie putting oneself in a position to make a diagnosis then litigation may follow and worse for the patient.
Discussing green issues is yet another distraction from the prime aim of a consultation that of optimally attending to the patients medical problems.
The RCP are the custodians of Physician Assistants and from what I see are in a bit of difficulty to say the least.
The profession has lost its way starting with covid and now we are reaping the fruits.( no pun!)
Still doctoring. I will keep spreading my Covid vaccine scepticism but add in a climate angle,if I have time.
I have been through the GMC 3 times so far,once was because of fellow doctors reporting me for being the first to use a treatment that is now standard in the NHS.
Come and get it!
Salute and best wishes.
Over the decades I have very rarely attended my GPs surgery and my intention, going forward, is to make it even less frequent.
Any GP which tries to lecture me about the climate won’t get the reaction they want.
The public are being groomed for the next WHO declared emergency