A fossil fuel ban would do serious harm to our health
In the freezing winter of 1987, an elderly lady living alone in Dorset received through the post the official “Don’t Die of Ignorance” leaflet warning of the danger of Aids (around one third of households receiving this leaflet contained either a single person over the age of 60 or an elderly couple). In response, she wrote to a national newspaper inquiring: “Do you think this caring government would swap my Aids leaflet (as new) for a bucket of coal?”
I recalled this letter this week when I heard the Royal College of General Practitioners had withdrawn its offer of facilities to the Oil and Gas UK Exploration Conference. Though this organisation seeks to discover cheaper and cleaner alternatives to coal, a petition from Extinction Rebellion Buddhists and Doctors for Extinction Rebellion demanded the College should not host the event, insisting: “We must massively reduce our dependency on fossil fuels and do so immediately.”
Given that coal, oil and gas currently provide more than 60 per cent of UK energy needs, immediately curtailing fossil fuels is impracticable and would have immediately damaging economic, social – and health – consequences. Renewable energy provides less than 15 per cent of UK energy needs and there is little prospect of rapid expansion.
Environmental activists who warn doctors of their Hippocratic oath to “do no harm” might reflect on the considerable harm that would result from any increase in gas prices.
Thirty years ago, it was not unusual to see patients with erythema ab igne, reddening of the lower legs from sitting too close to either an open fire or, more usually, a two-bar electric element. Though central heating fuelled by relatively cheap gas has rendered this obsolete, some 4.5million households still struggle through winter in fuel poverty.
Meanwhile, patients shivering at home because they can’t afford to turn on the central heating may be wondering why their doctors are too busy to visit them.
Grey hair? Grey matter
Like most GPS, I have heard stories of patients whose hair “turned white overnight” after a
All white: grey has its upsides traumatic experience. More commonly, patients describe this as a gradual process.
A recent study conducted on mice and published in the journal Nature proposes a possible mechanism. Stress (simulated by damp bedding, rapid light changes and tilting cages) provokes the release of noradrenaline which causes pigment-producing stem cells to migrate away from hair follicles. The resulting hair turns white.
An accompanying editorial offers some consolation: as they mature, silverback mountain gorillas develop a distinctive grey mane, conferring status and a potential evolutionary advantage. I will try to use this example to reassure my patients that their grey hairs suggest experience, leadership and trust.
Dr Ya-chieh Hsu, stem-cell biologist and co-author of the Harvard study, indicates its potential, not only in offering a target for treatments, but more widely for research into the role of stress in ageing. It also raises the prospect that patients distressed by their grey hair will join the queue of customers in the flourishing market of stem cell quackery.
In BBC Radio 4’s Stem Cell: Hard Sell, Lesley Curwen reported that, though there are some promising areas of research (notably in multiple sclerosis), the hype about stem cells has led to the proliferation of “unproven and unregulated treatments” for conditions from osteoarthritis to autism. In these areas there is “very little evidence of benefit, weak science and poor quality studies”.