In February, 2011 medical and public health groups began banding together to explain how global warming has and will take a profound toll on human health. The American Medical Association has been one of several esteemed and respected associations that have bought fully and put their name and reputation behind this theory.
In a Thursday conference call with reporters, the heads of the American Medical Association (AMA) and the American Public Health Association (APHA) joined with a pediatrician and a scientist to lay out what they say is a major public health issue: climate change caused by global warming.
The "evidence has only grown stronger" that climate change is responsible for an increasing number of health ills, including asthma, diarrheal disease, and even deaths from extreme weather such as heat waves, said Georges Benjamin, MD, executive director of the APHA.
The American Medical Association is determined to drive its membership down to some point even lower than the 17% of practicing physicians remaining in the group.
His suspicions were proven true when the AMA disclosed that it lost 12,000 dues-paying member physicians last year. Most observers believe this loss of membership is due to the group's support for President Obama's overhaul of the American health care system. They would be only partially correct.