Harvard Medical School’s Climate Change

Forget medicine: Harvard Medical School has put climate change into its curriculum. It’s the latest sign of how the nation’s most prestigious medical school prefers extreme ideology over medical education and excellence – and it’s a sad day for medical education as a whole.

Do No Harm is primarily focused on the rise of radical race-based and gender ideology in medicine, yet we ultimately deplore any ideological corruption of health care. Harvard’s move, which happened earlier this month, fits the bill. Here’s what’s in store for the future physicians it teaches:

“[The new curriculum] will include instruction on the effects of climate change on human health, the role health care systems play in contributing to climate change, and how physicians can work to be part of the solution…”

What’s more, Harvard Medical School has even hired a new “climate and health curriculum theme director.” That’s just what it needs: More administrators and bureaucrats focused on indoctrinating students with divisive and non-medical ideas.

The Boston Globe notes that Harvard is not alone: “Some 55 percent of US medical schools now teach students about the health effects of climate change, up from 27 percent in 2019.” However, in the past, medical schools taught students what they needed to know about the effect of heat on human physiology and the consequences of working in hot environments. Also, despite their rarity in the US, students were taught about tropical diseases such as malaria and trypanosomiasis.

The new focus on climate change is not about learning to care for diseases more prevalent in tropical climates. It is about climate activism. The school should be honest about what it’s doing: Turning students into activists. It should be doing the opposite: Helping students learn the skills and knowledge necessary to treat their patients. Harvard Medical School pretends it is doing that, but physicians can’t solve climate change any more than they can homelessness, poverty, or food insecurity. 

Is your medical school putting ideology ahead of education? Please let us know – securely and anonymously.