(Press-News.org) Over 50 leading doctors and academics including Fiona Godlee, editor in chief of The BMJ, have signed an open letter published in The Guardian today calling on the Wellcome Trust to divest from fossil fuel companies.
The letter is part of The Guardian's "Keep it in the Ground" Campaign that is urging the world's two biggest charitable funds -- the Wellcome Trust and the Gates Foundation -- to move their money out of fossil fuels.
It reads: "Divestment rests on the premise that it is wrong to profit from an industry whose core business threatens human and planetary health, bringing to mind one of the foundations of medical ethics -- first, do no harm."
In an editorial published today on The BMJ to coincide with the letter, Taavi Tillmann and colleagues also issue an urgent call for rapid action on divestment from fossil fuel companies.
This would send a "clear signal to policy makers and the public that fossil fuel companies do not support the general public interest and need to be better regulated", they explain.
Organisations calling for divestment include the British Medical Association, the Climate and Health Council and Medact.
But the Wellcome Trust and Gates Foundation have argued that as active shareholders of fossil fuel companies, they can change companies' practices through dialogue and constructive engagement.
Nevertheless, the authors argue that there is "little evidence" that shareholder engagement with fossil fuel companies is working to switch dependence on fossil fuel energy with renewables.
They point out that to date "no major fossil fuel company has noticeably shifted its investments into renewable."
In addition, they highlight parallels with the tobacco industry: "shareholder action was much less effective at bringing legislation and regulation to curb the tobacco epidemic than divestment and the erosion of the social legitimacy of tobacco companies."
If divestment is not an option, they add, then proponents of shareholder engagement need to be more transparent.
They suggest that the Wellcome Trust should strengthen its shareholder action by making it more aware that it does not invest in coal or tar sands. Also, it could demand the end of exploration of unconventional reserves, especially of tar sands and arctic oil, by a certain date.
Overall, they conclude that "transparent public engagement is more effective than quiet engagement behind the scenes" and this would help progress towards a "low carbon future" and "prevent runaway climate change and unprecedented harm to global health."
INFORMATION:
EDMONTON, Alberta, June 25 -- Working towards the ultimate goal to develop therapeutics to treat diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, ALS, and BSE (Mad Cow Disease), University of Alberta scientists Michael Woodside, Hao Yu, and Derek Dee are investigating the physical principles underlying the formation of misfolded protein aggregates. The aggregates of misfolded proteins -- proteins that clump together in the "wrong" structure -- feature prominently in these fatal degenerative diseases.
"This is the big mystery we're trying to solve," says Woodside, a professor ...
INDIANAPOLIS -- Indiana University cancer researchers found that a particular microRNA may be a potent therapeutic agent against pancreatic cancer. The research was published June 22 in the journal Scientific Reports.
Led by Janaiah Kota, Ph.D., assistant professor of medical and molecular genetics at the IU School of Medicine and a researcher at the Indiana University Melvin and Bren Simon Cancer Center, the researchers found that restoring missing microRNA-29 (miR-29) in pancreatic cancer stromal cells reduced the viability and growth of the cancerous cells.
A thick ...
A new study published in the Articles in Advance section of Transportation Science, a journal of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS), improves how air traffic managers cope with unexpected delays and provides them with more predictable ways to manage arrival traffic at airports with adverse weather.
The study, Incorporating Predictability into Cost Optimization for Ground Delay Programs, is by Yi Liu and Mark Hansen of the University of California, Berkeley. Ms. Liu received honorable mention for her research in the 2013 INFORMS ...
Scientists from Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet (LMU) in Munich and the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics can image the optical properties of individual nanoparticles with a novel microscope.
Nanomaterials play an essential role in many areas of daily life. There is thus a large interest to gain detailed knowledge about their optical and electronic properties. Conventional microscopes get beyond their limits when particle size falls to the range of a few 10 nanometers where a single particle provides only a vanishingly small signal. As a consequence, many investigations ...
The American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (AASLD), in partnership with the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) and in collaboration with the International Antiviral Society-USA (IAS-USA), created online Recommendations for Testing, Managing, and Treating Hepatitis C in 2014 to aid practitioners treating patients infected with hepatitis C virus (HCV). Now an update to the Guidance, with a summary of recommendations regarding treatment with direct-acting antiviral drugs, is published in the AASLD journal, Hepatology.
HCV is a blood-borne virus ...
(Philadelphia, PA) - In a life-threatening situation, the heart beats faster and harder, invigorated by the fight-or-flight response, which instantaneously prepares a person to react or run. Now, a new study by researchers at Temple University School of Medicine (TUSM) shows that the uptick in heart muscle contractility that occurs under acute stress is driven by a flood of calcium into mitochondria--the cells' energy-producing powerhouses.
Researchers have long known that calcium enters mitochondria in heart muscle cells, but the physiological role of that process was ...
When neurons become active, they call for an extra boost of oxygenated blood -- this change in the presence of blood in different regions of the brain is the basis for functional brain scans. However, what controls this increase or decrease in blood supply has been a long-standing debate.
In a paper published on June 25 in Neuron, Yale University scientists present the strongest evidence yet that smooth muscle cells surrounding blood vessels in the brain are the only cells capable of contracting to control blood vessel diameter and thus regulate blood flow. This basic ...
Think the nest of cables under your desk is bad? Try keeping the trillions of connections crisscrossing your brain organized and free of tangles. A new study coauthored by researchers at UC San Francisco and the Freie Universität Berlin reveals this seemingly intractable job may be simpler than it appears.
The researchers used high-resolution time-lapse imaging of the developing brains of pupal fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster) paired with mathematical simulations to unravel a trick of neural wiring that had stumped neuroscientists for decades. They discovered ...
Adult fruit flies given a cancer drug live 12% longer than average, according to a UCL-led study researching healthy ageing. The drug targets a specific cellular process that occurs in animals, including humans, delaying the onset of age-related deaths by slowing the ageing process.
The study published today in Cell and funded by the Max Planck Society and Wellcome Trust shows for the first time that a small molecule drug, which limits the effects of a protein called Ras, can delay the ageing process in animals. The treated fruit flies outlived the control group by staying ...
Boston, MA -- A new study led by researchers at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health finds that a malaria parasite protein called calcineurin is essential for parasite invasion into red blood cells. Human calcineurin is already a proven target for drugs treating other illnesses including adult rheumatoid arthritis and lupus, and the new findings suggest that parasite calcineurin should be a focus for the development of new antimalarial drugs.
"Our study has great biological and medical significance, particularly in light of the huge disease burden of malaria," said ...
