Free Republic

When Michael Howard arrives for a checkup with his lung specialist, he's worried about how his body will cope with the heat and humidity of a Boston summer. "I lived in Florida for 14 years and I moved back because the humidity was just too much," Howard tells pulmonologist Mary Rice, as he settles into an exam room chair at a Beth Israel Deaconess HealthCare clinic. Howard, who is 57, has COPD, a progressive lung disease that can be exacerbated by heat and humidity. Even inside a comfortable, climate-controlled room, his oxygen levels worry Rice. Howard reluctantly agrees to try...

Then Howard turns to Rice with a question she didn't encounter in medical school: "Can I ask you: Last summer, why was it so hot?" "The overall trend of the hotter summers that we're seeing [is] due to climate change," Rice says, "and with the overall upward trend, we've got the consequences of climate change." For Rice, connecting those consequences — heat waves, more pollen, longer allergy seasons — to her patients' health is becoming routine. She is among a very small but growing number of doctors and nurses who discuss those connections with patients.

A pipe was the only sign of drug use found near Chris Bennett's body in November. But it looked like the 32-year-old Taunton, Mass., native had stopped breathing and died of an opioid overdose. Bennett's mother, Liisa, couldn't understand what happened. Then she saw the toxicology report. "I'm convinced he was smoking cocaine that was laced," she says. "That's what he had in his system, [it] was cocaine and fentanyl." Liisa Bennett was shocked. Chris had developed an addiction to pain pills and then heroin in his late teens but had not used opioids for at least 10 years, as...