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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Warming Health Risk, Say Doctors Warn Global Meeting Of Weather, Disease

Todd Ackerman Houston Chronicle

A group of physicians warned Wednesday that global warming threatens human health as much as it does the climate.

Comparing their message to one doctors made in 1980 because of the threat of nuclear war, doctors from Brazil, Japan, Russia and the United States said that unless greenhouse gas emissions are greatly reduced in the 21st century, people will die or suffer debilitating illness through heat waves, violent weather and the spread of tropical disease.

“Political leaders and policy makers generally do not understand these consequences,” Dr. Eric Chivian, a Harvard University environmental health specialist, said at the 160-nation conference seeking to adopt a treaty to put a cap on global warming. “We are, in effect, conducting a global experiment with ourselves as the subjects, without having given our informed consent.”

The doctors’ warning echoed a full-page advertisement they took out in The New York Times last week. It was signed by more than 400 physicians and health care experts from 30 countries and included the editors of three leading medical publications: the New England Journal of Medicine, the Lancet and the British Medical Journal.

The warning came as key differences between nations continued to stymie negotiations at the conference being held in the historic Japanese city of Kyoto.

But negotiators said they saw hope on Wednesday’s third day of the 10-day conference. Raul Estrada, the chairman of important closed-door talks, said delegates were moving toward a consensus of just which gases should be controlled, and a Third World representative said “there’s always room for negotiation.”

The doctors’ group said the resulting public health threats would include:

Increased illnesses and deaths from heat waves and air pollution, particularly in urban areas, with the elderly, infants, the poor and chronic sufferers of heart and lung disease most at risk.

Increased outbreaks and spread of some infectious diseases carried by mosquitoes, including viral encephalitis, dengue fever, yellow fever and malaria.

Increased outbreaks of some water-borne diseases such as childhood diarrheal diseases and cholera.

Decreased availability of drinking water from the effects of drought, flooding and rising seas.