"Sustainability": an Agenda That Threatens Private Medicine, according to the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons

TUCSON, Ariz., March 9, 2015 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The alchemists of old sought the Philosopher's Stone, which was thought to be able to turn base metals into gold, and to endow its discoverer with eternal life and wisdom. The modern equivalent, the Progressive's Stone, would transmute the baser aspects of humankind to bring about a golden age, writes Charles Battig, M.D., in the spring 2015 issue of the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons. The concept is called "Sustainability."

Battig also compares this with another magical substance hypothesized by alchemists: the universal solvent that could dissolve anything. Sustainability "functions as a universal societal solvent as it is a vague conceptual term with open-ended meanings. It can be employed to limit personal freedom, diminish private property rights, destroy the useful products of civilization and their means of production, deprive humanity of the use of natural resources, and impose hardship on the least prosperous members of humanity."

As a formalized political doctrine, sustainability was introduced by the 1987 "Our Common Future" report of the United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development. "The UN presupposes an all-knowing ruling class that has unique knowledge of both the present and the future," Battig states.

Much of the UN's vision of sustainability was eventually incorporated into official U.S. federal policy by President Clinton, Battig states, and has been adopted by the American Planning Association. Agenda 21 is a UN blueprint for achieving the goal.

Major medical journals call for shifting global health efforts away from development and toward sustainability, Battig notes. The new costly and onerous coding system about to be imposed on physicians, the international classification of diseases (ICD-10), is linked to the enhanced reporting and oversight needed to create a "more efficient and sustainable system."

"Sustainability has been elevated in governmental policy to a level higher than our constitutional rights," Battig warns.

The Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons is published by the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS), a national organization representing physicians in all specialties since 1943. The Journal is committed to "promoting open debate and scientific integrity." Articles represent the views of the author, and do not necessarily reflect an official position of AAPS or the Journal.

SOURCE Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS)

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