Category: Press Release

You have probably heard the claim that marijuana is less harmful than tobacco or alcohol.

                We might find out that this is not true with more widespread use of more potent product. Too late? Arizona Prop 207, which legalizes marijuana and hashish, will be virtually impossible to change once it passes. A “yes” vote turns all 17 pages into law.

                Dangers of marijuana that you might not have heard about include:

• Serious mental illness: Teenagers who smoke marijuana regularly are about three times as likely to develop schizophrenia. And 27% of people with schizophrenia had been diagnosed with cannabis use disorder, according to a 2010 review.
• Violent behavior: Despite its reputation for making users relaxed and calm, cannabis appears to provoke some patients to violence. In a Swiss study of 265 psychotic patients, young men with psychosis who used cannabis had a 50% chance of becoming violent over a 3-year period.
• Lowered IQ: Marijuana harms brain development, which is not complete until the early 20s. There was an average drop of 8 IQ points between age 13 and 38 in heavy users in teen and adult years, compared with no drop in never-users. There is a significant decrease in verbal memory for each 5 years of cannabis use, accompanied by a decreased size of working memory areas of the brain shown on functional MRI.
• Birth defects: A spectrum of neurologic impairments is seen, including some that mimic autism, and many heart and gastrointestinal anomalies may occur. Marijuana lingers in the system months after use is stopped. The father’s use may also harm the baby.
• Cancer: Marijuana contains more tar and carcinogens than tobacco, and marijuana smokers tend to inhale more deeply and for a longer period.
• Impaired driving: Marijuana’s effects include distorted perceptions and impaired reaction time, attention span, and judgment. Users have a doubled risk of involvement in an auto crash.
• Cardiovascular disease: Users have an increased risk of stroke (26%), heart failure (10%), and sudden cardiac death.

I hope that you and yours are safe. My friends are fighting fires trying to cross the firebreaks around their home with hoes and shovels as well as water.

Meanwhile, fiery political darts are being hurled at producers of fossil fuels, users (that includes all of us), and politicians who resist a Green New Deal. Joe Biden called President Trump a “climate arsonist.”

Has climate change produced conditions leading to “unprecedented” fires? Did CO2 emissions cause the change? And can it be stopped by reducing those emissions?

The COVID-19 lockdowns have hinted at what a drastic change would be needed to get to “net zero.” With automobile traffic cut in half in April, and air traffic virtually halted for months, CO2 emissions were down only 8 percent—and more than 600,000 people were out of work.

Before prescribing a still more drastic remedy, let’s consider the diagnosis:

1. The fires are not unprecedented. The figure below shows that acreage burned was much greater in the early 20^th century.

2. Wildfires are affected by many variables:

• Sun’s variations and earth-sun orbital variation
• Extraterrestrial impacts such as meteorites
• Lightning
• Fuel loads
• Animal grazing
• Climate: rainfall + temperature
• Human activities: soil condition, land use, controlled burning, arson

We could change forest management practices NOW. Reducing CO2 emissions to zero MIGHT reduce temperature by 0.05 degrees Celsius by 2050.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) states that the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) is “NOT currently spreading in the community in the United States,” but that it is an “emerging, rapidly evolving situation.”

“It is impossible to be sure that the virus is not spreading without more extensive testing,” stated Jane M. Orient, M.D., president of Doctors for Disaster Preparedness. Testing for COVID-19 has been restricted to “persons under suspicion” (PUIs), that is persons with fever, signs of a lower respiratory infection, and a history of travel to China or exposure to a person known to have COVID-19 or travel to China within 14 days of symptom onset.

The CDC has now liberalized the criteria: “For severely ill individuals, testing can be considered when exposure history is equivocal (e.g., uncertain travel or exposure, or no known exposure) and another etiology has not been identified.” The availability of test kits is limited, and “performance issues” were identified in the manufacturing of one of the reagents, so these will need to be replaced.

Continue reading “Coronavirus Can’t Be Tracked in U.S. without More Testing”

After the fifth debate of Democrats contending for the Presidential nomination, physicians should not be venturing to make psychiatric diagnoses. But all Americans should be considering the wisdom of the proposals to “fight climate change.”

If a Democrat is elected and manages to implement the proposals, the planet will not die from climate disruption. Then he or she can claim to be the savior. However, the climate will proceed to follow natural laws and keep changing, no matter what humans do, confounding the latest apocalyptic predictions, as has happened over and over again.

Continue reading “Sanity and Democrats’ Climate Policy”

On Nov 20, the fifth debate by Democrat Presidential hopefuls devoted considerable attention to “climate change”—that is, predicted catastrophic climate disruptions caused by human emissions of greenhouse gases, especially carbon dioxide.

Tom Steyer claimed that he was the only one to put climate first on his agenda. Bernie Sanders said we only had 8 or 9 years to “get our act together.” No one expressed disagreement with the alleged urgent need to reduce or eliminate the use of “fossil fuels”—coal, oil, and natural gas.

Suggestions included a carbon tax, stopping pipelines, and prosecuting and jailing executives who allegedly lied about evidence purported to show that their product is destroying the planet. Presumably, all we need to do is to transfer “subsidies” for fossil-fuel industries to “clean renewables,” and affordable energy, environmental justice, and millions of “good-paying” jobs will somehow emerge, observes Physicians for Civil Defense president Jane M. Orient, M.D.

Continue reading “Democrats Propose Disastrous Energy Policy”

On Nov 4, President Trump officially notified the UN that the U.S. would withdraw from the Paris climate agreement, an action that will become effective in one year.

At the same time, more than 11,000 scientists from 153 nations signed on by internet to an article in BioScience entitled “World Scientists Warning of a Climate Emergency.”

Lead authors William J. Ripple and Christopher Wolf are affiliated with the Department of Forest Ecosystems and Society at Oregon State University. More than 10 percent of signatories are students or post-doctoral fellows, and less than 10 percent are in fields related to the dynamics of earth’s atmosphere. There is an archaeoentomologist (expert in ancient insects), a student in urban regeneration, a social psychologist, an audiologist, a botany compliance officer—many diverse fields. The  list is inaccessible now while dozens of internet signers such as “Mouse, Mickey” are removed.

Continue reading “11,000 Scientists Cry “Climate Emergency!” as Trump Begins Withdrawal from Paris Agreement”

Bernie Sanders has promised to save the Planet, make money, re-engineer our economy, and create 20 million new good “green” jobs—for a mere $16 trillion, or $800,000 per job. Some details we might want to ask him:

• What exactly will these workers be doing? Clearing enough land to install solar and wind farms? One estimate is an area greater than the size of New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio combined. Another is 80% of the lower 48. Retrofitting all existing buildings for energy efficiency? Turning vehicles with gasoline or diesel engines, and gas appliances into scrap? Digging up and processing 500,000 pounds of raw materials to fabricate each new electric car battery?
• How many jobs will be lost in coal mining, oil and gas production, and other industries?
• Where will the money come from? Federal tax revenues are about $3.6 trillion per year. How much will they increase? ($16 trillion is nearly 4 ½ years of current total revenue.) With a federal debt already exceeding $22 trillion, where will we find lenders?
• What has happened to green jobs in the EU as tax subsidies dry up, and to electricity bills there?
• What will he do about the hundreds of new coal-fired generating stations in China, India, and elsewhere?

For more information, see “Green New Deal,” Civil Defense Perspectives, January 2019; the Climate Change IQ Test; what the Green New Deal means for medicine.

In the Democratic presidential debates, candidates promised to give a lot, but we need to ask: What will they take?

Under a “Green New Deal,” what happens to:

• Your van or SUV big and powerful enough to carry your kids, groceries, tools of your trade, camping equipment, etc.
• Your backyard grill—or your backyard in the suburbs
• Your favorite foods, especially if animal-based
• Your gas stove, water heater, and furnace
• Your air conditioner
• Your third child (and maybe the first and second one too—the population needs to decrease)
• Your job as an auto mechanic, coal miner, truck driver, petroleum engineer, rancher
• The trucks that collect garbage, deliver groceries, bring concrete to construction strikes, haul goods of all kinds
• Your business (service station, car dealership, factory that requires a lot of reliable electricity, restaurant, HVAC installation and maintenance, etc.)
• Your vacation in Hawaii (or other place not accessible by train)
• Fire trucks, ambulances, police cars?

Remember, they want zero fossil fuels—which means no internal combustion engines and electricity only from “clean, renewable” (unreliable, expensive) sources.

For more information, see “The Green New Deal: What It Means for Medicine.”

In the second round of Democratic presidential debates, the main difference between candidates was their level of passion about the “climate crisis.” Moderators asked no probing questions about the evidence for the crisis or the economic consequences of a Green New Deal.         

Here are some questions that thoughtful reporters should ask:

• Where should the $2 trillion proposed by Elizabeth Warren or $400 billion by Joe Biden, to research alternative energy, be spent? What might the ROI (return on investment in dollars or gigatons  of carbon dioxide saved) be, compared with using the money to build nuclear generating stations? (China can build one for around $3 billion each.)
• How much will it cost to replace our 260 million gasoline-powered cars with electric cars, or will they just be junked?
• Exactly how will food get from farm to supermarket without diesel-fueled trucks?
• What has happened to the price of electricity in green energy leaders such as Germany, Australia, and California, and  how does this affect the poor and middle class?
• Candidates want to keep a “climate denier” out of the White House. What would they do with the 31,000 scientists who signed the Oregon Petition stating that there was no evidence that atmospheric carbon dioxide was causing catastrophic climate effects?

For further information, see the Climate Change IQ Test or “Green New Deal,” Civil Defense Perspectives, January 2019.