On March 11th, our dear friend and daughter, Thresa Irene Pattee, passed on peacefully from the comfort of her home, after a valiant battle with osteosarcoma.
The medical profession is observing a rising number of calls to action considering the threat that climate change poses to global human health. Theory-led bioethical analyses of the scope and weight of physicians’ normative duty towards climate protection and its conflict with individual patient care are currently scarce. This article offers an analysis of the normative issues at stake by using Korsgaard’s neo-Kantian moral account of practical identities. We begin by showing the case of physicians’ duty to climate protection, before we succinctly introduce Korsgaard’s account. We subsequently show how the duty to climate protection can follow from physicians’ identity of being a healthcare professional. We structure conflicts between individual patient care and climate protection, and show how a transformation in physicians’ professional ethos is possible and what mechanisms could be used for doing so. An important limit of our analysis is that we mainly address the level
As pediatricians committed to children's well-being, we see firsthand the disproportionate health impacts of rising greenhouse gas emissions, urging action to combat climate change and divest from fossil fuels.
Greater use of frugal innovation has the potential to provide affordable healthcare with a lower environmental footprint, argue Cyan Brown , Yasser Bhatti , and Matthew Harris
The health sector has an important role in protecting human and planetary health by reducing its environmental impact. Health systems globally are collectively responsible for 4.4% of global net greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to the emissions from 514 coal fired power plants annually1 which damage health in several ways, including heatwaves and inhalation of pollutants.
High income countries are the main healthcare polluters, with health systems in Australia, Canada, the United States, and Switzerland each contributing over a ton of emissions per capita.2 Collective action has started to address this: over 50 countries have committed to developing climate resilient and low carbon health systems. Two high income countries and 12 low and middle income countries have also committed to reaching net zero carbo