The adverse health effects of climate change should be the focus of physician advocacy efforts and of conversations between physicians and their patients.
AMA J Ethics. 2017;19(12):1174-1182. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2017.19.12.ecas3-1712.
The social institutions of medicine and the state have a complex history of interaction in which doctors have been the originators of political ideals, goals, and social change but equally often have found themselves to be instruments of political authority.
One of the many doors money and power often open gives access to opioids where they would otherwise be withheld without strict oversight and management. Elvis Presley provides perhaps the most famous example of unmanaged access to drugs.
An older generation was far more likely to understand itself and its social world in terms of sin and virtue, vice and godliness. Lack of self-control and weakness of will were moral failings to be avoided. That sort of language has fallen on hard times.
The total concentration, power tools, and high stakes of the OR provided an exciting escape from the world I was supposed to occupy and from which I was supposed to derive my deepest satisfaction as a woman.