[rad-green] Doctors Should Protest Climate Inaction, Top Medical Journal Says

*https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/doctors-should-protest-climate-inaction-top-medical-journal-says/
<https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/doctors-should-protest-climate-inaction-top-medical-journal-says/>*

*Scientific American           November 1, 2019*





*Doctors Should Protest Climate Inaction, Top Medical Journal SaysHealth
professionals have joined climate protests and organizations have divested
from fossil fuelsBy Maya Earls, E&E News*

[image: Doctors Should Protest Climate Inaction, Top Medical Journal Says]
*Doctors for Extinction Rebellion in London, on October 12 2019.
Credit: Daniel Leal-Olivas Getty Images
<https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/protesting-doctors-stand-barefoot-alongside-180-pairs-of-news-photo/1175389827>*

The editor-in-chief of one of the world’s oldest and most prestigious
medical journals has said doctors and medical professionals should engage
in nonviolent protests to address climate change.

Richard Horton of *The Lancet* said in a video uploaded by Rubber Republic
last week that engaging in these social protests is part of the duty of a
doctor. He said that the U.K.-based General Medical Council should be fully
supportive of health professionals who engage in climate protests based on
its own guidelines on the duties of a doctor.

“The climate crisis is one of the most, I would say the most, existential
crisis facing our communities in the world today,” Horton said.

His statement comes after multiple health organizations have taken action
on climate change in the United Kingdom. Newcastle Hospitals declared a
climate emergency in June, followed by the Royal College of General
Practitioners in September. Other health organizations including the
British Medical Association, the Royal College of Emergency Medicine and
the Royal College of Physicians have committed to divesting from fossil
fuels.

Health professionals have also joined the front lines of protests. In
September, 30 doctors protested at the U.K. Department for Business, Energy
and Industrial Strategy in London. Some of the protesters glued themselves
to the building. Doctors for Extinction Rebellion, a climate-focused
activist group, says four of its members were arrested.

More than 200 health professionals marched through London on Oct. 13 to
protest government inaction on climate change, according to Doctors for
Extinction Rebellion. The group says profound backing from medical
professionals goes a long way to increasing support for the cause.

“This in turn will give the government a strong mandate to act as we feel
it must, and empower those MPs who do take this seriously to take centre
stage,” the group said on its website.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has previously dismissed Extinction
Rebellion protesters as “uncooperative crusties” who should abandon their
“hemp-smelling bivouacs,” according to multiple reports. But *The
Guardian* reported
that his father, Stanley Johnson, told protesters gathered in London that
he wears the “uncooperative crusties” badge with pride.

“It’s one of the nicest things that has been said about me for a long
time,” he is quoted as saying. “A non-cooperative crusty, absolutely
superb—do they taste good?”

Horton wrote in an article posted to *The Lancet* on Oct. 5 that the United
Kingdoms’s scientific community is doing too little to engage the public
and politicians in the fight for climate justice. He wrote that unlike the
science community, the health community is injecting moral force into the
political debate about climate action.

Margaret Hamburg, chair of the board of directors of the American
Association for the Advancement of Science, echoed his statement in a
letter to scientists that same week, according to the medical journal.

“We must activate the science community to speak up in new ways to address
the impacts of climate change at the local, state, national, and global
level,” she said. “And we need to act now.”

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