PLANETARY HEALTH WEEKLY

In Blog # 24 on human carrying capacity on planet Earth I mentioned Donella Meadows’ places to intervene in a system that I first came across in a Whole Earth Review 1997 issue. She worked with Jay Forrester who developed systems theory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. At an American Public Health Association meeting in 1994 I heard Forrester

Robert Sapolsky, the neuroscientist and Stanford sage has come out with a new book: Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will.He argues that we have no free will because of our individual histories that go back milliseconds, to seconds, to hours, to days, to years, to preconception, and beyond to the arrival of humans on the planet. Our actions are

(Published in the Planetary Health Weekly, Vol. 9, No. 46, November 16, 2023) How to understand our world today that appears to be in a genuine mess? The Planetary Health Weekly (PHW) lays out so many issues regarding global warming (or the climate crisis) but let’s consider the context in which they occur. In my 4th blog in April 2022,

(from the Planetary Health Weekly, Vol. 9, No. 42, October 19, 2023) What would it take for the counter-elites, including those frustrated elite-wannabes as well as progressives seen in the riots and anti-government demonstrations, to return to the massive organization efforts such groups did almost a century ago to turn off the wealth pump and push us in the direction

                                                                       Credit: Turchin and Korotayev, 2020 One way to confuse people is to use fancy words that are unfamiliar. That is much of what constitutes the educational process

Check out the 16 slides by Ms. Ramos Let’s explore the concept of nation states. John Mearsheimer, a political science professor at the University of Chicago presents a theory that states are the principal actors politically and have no higher authority over them. All states have some offensive military capabilities with difficult to discern intentions that are hidden inside the state bureaucracy

Credit: taxjusticenow.org Last month’s blog expressed concern that the United States could be doing a replay of what happened to health and health status in Russia after the downfall of the Soviet Union in 1991. Mortality there increased and life expectancy has only now returned to about where it was before the breakup. U.S. life expectancy is where it was in

I worked for three decades as an emergency (ER) physician.  I kind of fell into the job at the suggestion of a medical school classmate after returning from Nepal in 1977.  Upon completing medical school in 1973 and doing a year’s internship at Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal I headed off to Nepal where I helped set up a community

In March a year ago I wrote about the status of health in the United States and its poor outcomes compared to other rich and not-so-rich nations.  I then went on to point out the political nature of health production in a society.  The evidence on how people in America die far too young has been receiving some attention by

March 16, 2023 Are there any benefits to having adverse childhood experiences (ACEs)?  What we explored in Blog #12 suggested mostly harms.  In the clinical setting suggesting that people be screened for ACEs is sometimes met with asking why do it when there is no treatment for them.  Within clinical medicine there tends to be a reluctance to look for