Posted on 02/11/2019 11:34:41 AM PST by Oldeconomybuyer
Our health system is already overburdened, and extreme climate change could put it over the edge. And it will unfortunately be our most vulnerable communities - low income communities, communities of color, and places where health care is already hard to come by - who will suffer the worst consequences.
As a fourth-year medical student, I’ve learned plenty about caring for patients with common illnesses and injuries. But as a native of fire-ravaged Northern California, and a student in Pennsylvania - where I hear regularly about communities torn apart by the natural gas industry - I can’t help but worry about my ability to care for my patients in an age of climate change.
Climate change isn’t just an environmental crisis, after all. It’s a looming health crisis. More hurricanes, floods, droughts, and wildfires means more disease, dehydration, famine, injury, and death.
Our health system is already overburdened, and extreme climate change could put it over the edge. And it will unfortunately be our most vulnerable communities - low income communities, communities of color, and places where health care is already hard to come by - who will suffer the worst consequences.
While my medical school’s curriculum encourages deep thinking about how to expand health care for underserved communities, it’s included little if any acknowledgement of the coming climate catastrophe.
Some medical colleges are beginning to wake up to the need to prepare the future generation of physicians to handle these challenges, and more colleges are joining this critical effort each day. For example, the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai recently launched a Climate Change Curriculum Infusion Project, which seeks to prepare future physicians by weaving the impacts of climate change on health into existing medical curriculum.
We know that climate change is real, manmade, and accelerating far beyond what researchers originally predicted. It’s not up for debate. There are countless studies to back that up - including the Special Report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the 2018 Global Climate Report, and the Fourth National Climate Assessment, to name a few.
We didn’t create this pending catastrophe - an overzealous, greedy fossil fuel industry did. But my generation will have to bear the consequences of their recklessness, and a whole generation of doctors, nurses, and other health professionals will have to care for those who suffer.
As the data rolls in, we understand that climate change has already begun to make permanent changes to our world - and that only rapid, sweeping changes to our energy system and environmental policies will even begin to mitigate the damage.
The truth is we’re moving too slow. Under the current U.S. administration, we’re in fact moving in the wrong direction if we hope to minimize this looming health crisis. We need to commit to zero emissions and an overhaul of our energy system to renewables - yesterday.
Whatever happens on the policy front, health professionals need to be ready for the disruptions we know are coming.
Medical colleges are in a unique position, and have a distinct obligation, to prepare future generations of physicians for the challenge of a lifetime. Medical students need our educators to help us - not only to prepare our medical practice, but to take leadership in pushing for the sweeping policy changes required to avert the worst consequences of this impending disaster.
We need everyone to wake up and see that if we don’t act boldly now, we’ll have a crisis too big for our system to handle - and too much for any budding physician’s hands to hold.
Autumn Vogel is a fourth-year medical student at Penn State College of Medicine and a student representative on the board of Physicians for Social Responsibility.
She’s wrong in so many ways. Another example, California has always had problems with forest fires. The Los Angeles basin has been known to trap pollutants due to its topography going back to the 1500’s; and among the indigenous tribes they called it the “valley of the smoke”. It has an onshore breeze but hills about 11 miles inland so it keeps the pollution trapped most of the year. In the 1970s, when this doctor-to-be’s parents probably hadn’t even yet met each other, they used to tell us breathing L.A. air was like smoking 2 packs a day - but they also told us to fear the next ice age! Now they’ve flipped it on us.
As far as communities “ravaged” by the natural gas industry are concerned, try asking the workers employed by that industry, their family members, and the businesses where they are major customers because of that very industry. The proper term, instead of “ravaged,” is “enriched.”
BTW, what's paying for her education and how does she get back and forth from CA to PA, by horseback? But, OOPS, horses eat a lot of hay and poop and fart massively. Indeed, if she rode one for that trip and didn't drop out due to saddle sores and exhaustion, she'd discover it consumed a lot more carbon than a jet does to carry her the same distance. Even better, just imagine how much solid and liquid waste her horse would leave along the way; that really ought to give her concerns as a wannabe MD.
Hint: PSU ain’t picky.
Oh, good grief, just help people feel better ....you f'in virtue-signalling a-holes.
She aced her tests, did what her teachers told her, assimilated everything she was taught uncritically and spent the rest of her time sucking up to authority. If you want to be a physician you get no rewards for critical or tangential thought. The system rewards the conformist.
Sorry Autumn, but you and others did indeed create this pending catastrophe (your words - not mine), not the greedy oil companies who met the demands of consumers. One of those demands was to provide healthcare providers essential tools to correctly diagnose the problems patients were experiencing.
So far there is no concrete evidence to even support that a coming catastrophe is coming due to man's influence upon earth's warming. The warming has been a long term trend that began well before man' industrialization.
Signs actually point to a possible end of the warming trend. These signs are not the product of failed models that in no way represent what is actually occurring. The models you hold ear & dear have already proven themselves to be useless as a tool to determine the actual science behind the warming trend the earth has experienced over the last 11,700 years since the last ice age referred to as the Pleistocene Epoch came to a close.
Quit worrying about forces of which you have no control, and concentrate on learning what you can actually or potentially in the future control. Weather is not one of them.
“.....how did she get into medical school!”
She’s a dyed in the wool liberal product. Almost everyone coming out of school today is. That’s part of the assembly line and those that don’t get it right are not allowed into schools like Penn State.
Additionally, Penn State is not rated nationally for their med school in Hershey and in some of the blogs I’ve seen, students there, unnamed, are recommending new prospects consider other schools. So much for the legitimacy of the quality of the student. Can turn out to be another of those “okay” doctors we see on TV commercials.
rwood
Good grief how did she get into medical school!
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How did Prof. Blasey Ford the dimwitted hazy minded Kavanaugh accuser get to be called a psychologist? Also a later GoFundMe rich hag-—she’s smart after all.
And Ocasio Cortez get to rule over the economic destiny of all Americans for the next 100 years if a Dem wins the presidency in 2020 (God forbid). A really tenuous awareness of economics but got a degree.
A little knowledge is a truly dangerous thing in their hands.
A piece of paper printed in the hundreds by diploma mills all over the country.
Liberal = genius, you graduate. Conservative = you fail and you will not be considered for tenure here. Woman = women only grants, women only scholarships, special professional job interviews set aside for women only by employers on campus, and a watchful eye by the government agencies to gather proof of compliance that enough women are “qualified” to get promotions in the various companies.
Man = have you considered lawn care, snow removal and transporting and cleaning portable toilets? They’re hiring men in those fields. That’s about it.
Really? Says who?
Babe, referring to Ms. Vogel:
Just try, try caring for your patients (God’s mercy on them if they get stuck with you) without all of the neat medical toys invented by Dead, Evil Old White Men that are powered by the nuclear and fossil fuels you want to eliminate. Many us here, myself included, owe our lives to those very “Dead, Evil, Old, White Men,” the neat toys they invented, and the mostly nuclear and fossil fuels that power them.
THREE CHEERS AND TWO THUMBS UP FOR CO2!!!
> It’s not up for debate. <
That statement is chilling. And especially so coming from a person in the sciences. Scientific topics are always up for debate. Always, always, always.
So would want to permanently close a scientific debate? Someone who is ignorant of how science works. Or someone who is a fascist.
Such a gullible and lazy thinker would be a danger to the field of medicine.
Why does this kind of crap get posted?
It’s important to keep track of what the enemy is saying.
There’s up to 20% higher mortality when there’s a bad strain of flu. Otherwise just 10% higher mortality in winter.
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That higher mortality in Winter mostly comes from the cold, diseases associated with it, and excessive exertion doing things like shoveling snow. Indeed, escaping all that cold and misery is why so may elderly Snow Birds flee the north and go south. Looks like “global warming” might not be such a bad thing after all.
Remember - 50% of all doctors graduated in the bottom 1/2 of their class!!!
Just pray that God gives His mercy to anybody unfortunate enough to be stuck with her.
And people wonder why I generally dislike women docs...and I’m a woman
Bat sheet crazy, arrogant, virtue signaling moonbat. Not my doctor!
There is a special title reserved for the student that graduates dead last in their medical class ...
That title is ... Dr.
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