Scholars suggest universal health codes for climate change ailments
Matt Lamb
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Scholars want to see new universal health codes created for climate change ailments.
Health scholars proposed updating the World Health Organization’s International Classification of Diseases to include “climate-sensitive health conditions.”
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Writing in Medpage Today, the academics argue the change “would help medical professionals and patients understand the scope of the health threats posed by climate change and inform policies to keep people safe.”
But doing so would further erode trust in public health and medical professionals, who have already lost ground in the nearly four years since COVID-19 lockdowns began. The most blatant example of this crumbling credibility is the infamous public health letter in May 2020 that declared “white supremacy” a “lethal public health issue” that justified massive protests.
With their climate change argument, University of Washington professor Stefan Wheat, Stanford University professor Chethan Sarabu, and Australian professor Zerina Lokmic-Tomkins start from the premise that “the health crisis posed by climate change is enormous” and “the immense risks of climate change to our health [have] become even more obvious.”
But they assume that all environmental factors that may contribute to health problems must be from climate change.
They want “new climate-sensitive ICD codes, such as ‘sequela from heatwave’ and ‘exposure to wildfire smoke,’” tracked by health officials. But not all fires are linked to climate change. For example, “scientists” were confident in July 2022 that a 19,000-acre fire in California was due to and accelerated by climate change.
This fire, like others, was caused by “climate change conditions [that] continue to warm the planet and create scenarios for devastating wildfires to wreak havoc on communities and nature,” ABC News reported, based on its interview with Kristina Dahl from the Union of Concerned Scientists.
While it may be true the fire spread due to drier weather, it was reportedly started by an arsonist.
The academics also highlighted another problem some health professionals struggle with: hubris.
They wrote that “clinicians are uniquely positioned to help identify and map the true extent of the crisis through improved medical coding” and “healthcare providers are at the vanguard of this movement [to protect against climate change’s effects].”
But this same ego problem is another reason not to adopt their proposal.
By doing so, the WHO would send a message that climate change is definitely causing widespread health problems. However, in a repeat of COVID policy, it would ignore underlying comorbidities that contribute to poor health outcomes.
Consider the Canadian woman diagnosed with “climate change” several years ago. Wildfire smoke, which may or may not have been due to climate change, obviously exacerbated her asthma.
That just makes sense. But the woman’s reaction might also have been due to her lack of air conditioning, diabetes, and a preexisting heart condition. She was also in her 70s and lived in a trailer.
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The ICD code update would also further blur the lines between health professionals, who should contribute their expertise to important topics of the day, and lawmakers, who are tasked with considering different trade-offs and coming up with reasonable solutions.
The WHO already has lost credibility given its closeness to China and its botched handling of the COVID outbreak. Adding the new codes would be another blow to trust in public health and would continue the damage started during the COVID lockdowns.
Matt Lamb is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is an associate editor for The College Fix and has previously worked for Students for Life of America and Turning Point USA.