European medical students are being trained to consider the climate impact of inhalers and 'green prescriptions' – are you surprised?

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At the same time, the Association of American Medical Colleges conducted a survey and found that 55% of medical schools stated that the impact of climate change on health is a required topic in their courses.

Posted by Leslie Eastman

Although I do not suffer from asthma, I know friends who have children who do. I have seen that using an inhaler is crucial to effectively controlling asthma. They deliver medications directly to the lungs, resulting in faster relief and better symptom control.

However, in an effort to eliminate “greenhouse gases” based on pseudoscience about the climate crisis, they were targeted in a study by Stanford University Health Care.

Dr. Jyothi Tirumalasetty, MD, said the research is focused on hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) or hydrofluorocarbons (HFC) propellants. They push the drug out of the inhaler in measured doses, but can also escape into the atmosphere at alarming levels.

“These hydrofluorocarbons are hydrofluorocarbons and propellants, and now we know that they trap heat in the atmosphere thousands of times better than carbon dioxide, and they contribute to global warming and worse,” Tirumalasetti said. Yes.

She said some inhalers emit the same amount of greenhouse gases as driving an average gasoline-powered car 60 miles.

To better understand these levels, Tirumalasetty and her colleagues used U.S. safety data and prescription records for inhalers. But there are also big differences between brands of HFCs.

Indeed, in the UK, doctors have been told to stop prescribing blue asthma inhalers under guidance from the National Health Service (NHS), which claims the devices contribute to climate change.

Of course, inhalers harm the planet. They keep asthmatics alive, allowing them to maintain their carbon footprint for decades. Your existence is a problem that management needs to solve. pic.twitter.com/ksgTdM5owe

— Peter Hague (@peterrhague) November 27, 2024

Even if these gases achieve everything the “experts” say, the solar cycle will still be the most important influence on Earth's climate. And, I doubt the effect on temperature would have the same negative impact on quality of life as not being able to breathe.

However, common sense cannot stop European medical schools from pushing meaningless climate change priorities and “green prescriptions” on their students.

Medical school leaders say future doctors will consider the impact of inhalers on the climate.
They will also receive more training on how to recognize and treat heat stroke, while mosquito-borne diseases such as malaria and dengue will become a more important part of European medical school curricula.

Insiders stressed that the curriculum has not yet been finalized and suggestions about inhalers are only options that could be considered.

The initiative, overseen by the European Network for Climate and Health Education, a network of 25 medical schools led by the University of Glasgow, will integrate climate lessons into the courses of more than 10,000 students.

…Students will learn about “green prescriptions,” in which doctors should encourage patients to participate in activities such as community gardening and tree planting. This sits alongside “active travel”, which involves walking or cycling rather than driving. Both activities provide personal health benefits while also having a positive impact on the environment.

But, don't worry: The cost of the inhaler will be capped by Big Pharma's price cap.

Pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca has agreed to limit out-of-pocket costs for climate-friendly asthma inhalers to $35, a move praised by lawmakers for its potential benefits to both the environment and patients.

The news follows an investigation by POLITICO's E&E News into how developing emission-free inhalers could help AstraZeneca and another inhaler maker, GlaxoSmithKline, by putting old drugs in new ones. Patent protection reduces competition for at least ten years.

Astrajetlan and GlaxoSmithKline are currently developing so-called green inhalers, which do not rely on hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs, as propellants like traditional inhalers to push drugs into patients' lungs.

As a reminder, HFCs were originally used as replacement gases for those gases identified as being ozone-depleting.

These “climate-friendly inhalers” work just as well as other inhalers, but the choice of medication should be a joint decision between doctor and patient, not based on the advice of agenda-driven eco-activists. The only calculation that needs to be made is whether the device delivers the correct amount of medication to the user in a timely manner and at a reasonable cost.

While European medical schools are developing these plans, it is important to note that the Association of American Medical Colleges did a survey and found that 55% of medical schools reported that the impact of climate change on health was a required topic in their curricula by 2022. It doubled from 27% a year ago.

For those who prioritize human health and comfort, the trend lines don't look promising.

As director of education and policy at the Center for Climate, Health, and the Global Environment (C-CHANGE) and an assistant professor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Basu leads the creation of a new interdisciplinary center for climate change and planetary research. Launching this fall, it is open to every student in the school.

“We see the benefit of bringing individuals with diverse disciplinary backgrounds and life experiences together to think, learn and create climate solutions,” he said.

As an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, Basu helps integrate climate change into all aspects of the four-year curriculum. He describes and evaluates this process in a new paper published May 29 in PLOS Climate, titled “Climate Change, Environment, and Health: Implementation and Preliminary Study of Harvard Medical School’s Longitudinal Integrated Curriculum Themes and Novel Competency Framework Evaluate”.

Hopefully we can reverse this trend and get people back to being a priority.