Environmental hazards and public health: lessons for the practice of medicine and for public policy.
The separation of occupational and environmental disease from the mainstream of medical practice has deep roots in the culture of the profession. Medical practice centered on individual patient care as nineteenth-century science yielded the therapeutic triumphs of the twentieth century. Social issues seemed remote to medical practitioners as the rewards of scientifically based therapies upstaged the unglamorous aspects of preventive medicine. Public health was left to politicians and bureaucrats. Victorian ambivalence toward the less successful members of society reinforced the isolation of medicine from public policy. As a consequence, physicians are largely ignored in contemporary debates about environmental hazards, to the detriment of both society and the profession.
Wedeen
R P
RP
VA Medical Center, East Orange, NJ 07019.
Sheehan
H E
HE
D004781:Environmental Exposure / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence*; D006256:Hazardous Waste / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence*; D016273:Occupational Exposure / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence; D011050:Policy Making; D011634:Public Health / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence*; D014481:United States
D006256:Hazardous Waste