Tuesday, February 20, 2007
BMJ Urges Others, Fails to "Lead by Example" on Climate Change
Filed under: Medgadget Exclusive
, Society
Here's an update on (what we affectionately call around here) the Fionagate. Following our exposé of BMJ editor Dr. Fiona Godlee's planet destroying behavior, we have tried to contact her and the journal's media relations department. Below is the email that was sent to solicit their comment. Predictably, we have received no response from them, as they have no defense. According to Dr. Godlee, it is you who leaves a carbon footprint; it's you whose conference is unimportant.
Dear Dr. Godlee:We, the editors of Medgadget.com, an independent weblog of medical technologies, have just published a post criticizing your editorial about the carbon footprints of doctors.
As a follow up to this, we would like to conduct an email interview, by asking you to kindly answer the following four questions.
1. Would you, Dr. Godlee lead by example, and renounce attendance to any of the future conferences for the rest of your professional life, unless you attend by teleconference or in person in your home city?
2. Are you willing to cancel all BMJ-sponsored conferences, such as this year's BMJ Masterclasses, conferences that inevitably plunge our planet into a further carbon crisis shock?
3. What has BMJ done to develop online conferences?
4. Your co-editorialist Prof. Ian Roberts considers himself a "climate criminal" [see: http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/331/7517/643 "Confession of a climate criminal" (BMJ 2005;331:643 (17 September)].
Do you, Dr. Godlee, consider yourself a climate criminal? If yes, what punishment would you consider for yourself?
Thank you,
Editors of Medgadget
So, what's next? Please let us know if you have seen Dr. Godlee at some other conference, not mentioned in the original post. Also, please let us know about the upcoming BMJ-sponsored conference: it is time to stand up and to defend our embattled planet!
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