Green ideologues threaten to make Jonathan Swift’s “Modest Proposal” look like a realistic proposition. A “Slow Medicine” initiative claims that health care, in particular modern diagnostics such as magnetic resonance, is a climate killer and therefore humanity must de facto renounce modern health care. Results of a so-called study were presented at a Turin conference on “Choosing Wisely” organized by “Slow Medicine” on July 25.
“The environment is a health issue, changes in the environment affect health,” explains Guido Giustetto, head of the Physicians Association of Turin, “but there is another very interesting relationship, which is not always known: It is the fact that the health system, the system of health organizations contributes, in a part that is not exactly small, to global warming. Some studies calculate this to be around 4 to 4.5%. So the totality of our activities also generates an increase in temperatures.
“Let’s take concrete examples, to understand what we are talking about. If we, for example, take a blood test, we contribute to the production of carbon dioxide, CO2, and therefore to an increase in heat. To give an idea, for every thousand blood tests we pollute, through the production of CO2, as if we drove 700 km by car. But the most discouraging figure is that for CT scans, MRIs. An MRI working for an average year produces an amount of CO2 corresponding to the pollution produced by a car traveling 500,000 km.
“What can we do then as physicians?” Giustetto asks in the video. “We have two paths: the first is to try to make people, and also our colleagues, aware of this phenomenon. The second is to move concretely: when we decide to prescribe an MRI, a blood test, remind ourselves that if it’s not essential, if it’s not appropriate, if it’s not important, in addition to doing something useless and therefore wasting resources, we also do damage because we increase the problem of temperatures and therefore the climate crisis that we are experiencing” (although he gives zero evidence that blood tests or MRIs, or for that matter CO2, have anything to do with temperatures. Don’t seek medical care from this guy!)
The first “Slow Medicine” society was born in Italy in 2011, followed by other societies in several countries. Slow Medicine is associated with “Choosing Wisely,” an initiative of the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) Foundation.
