Sense of Urgency

Every Physicians Committee doctor member and supporter is an agent of change. To read the stories of a few of them, check out the new summer issue of Good Medicine magazine. Here’s my editorial from the issue:

When we founded the Physicians Committee 31 years ago, the name "committee" fit pretty well. We were a small group of doctors determined to put prevention first, promote healthful diets, and tackle ethical issues in research.

We’ve grown a lot since then. Today, many thousands of doctors, along with other health care providers, scientists, and concerned citizens work with our 80-person staff to advance our cause.

And we’ve succeeded. The Physicians Committee eliminated the “meat group” in federal nutrition policy, put vegetarian diets front and center in the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, carried out human clinical research studies that have revolutionized the treatment of diabetes and other health problems, and provided the scientific data that has helped foster major reductions in meat and dairy consumption in the United States. We brought about the end of the use of animals in medical school curricula throughout the United States and Canada, were instrumental in ending the use of chimpanzees in medical research, revolutionized chemical testing legislation to favor nonanimal methods, and stopped many cruel animal experiments.

What drives these doctors and the work they do?

A sense of urgency. Americans now eat 1 million animals every hour, leading to epidemics of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and other health problems, not to mention the massive abuse of animals and environmental destruction. The United States research enterprise continues to favor pharmaceutical development, at the expense of critically needed studies addressing the nutritional causes of disease. And although many people are changing their diets and revolutionizing their health, many others still have no access to the information they need. 

Each of these problems is urgent. And our ever-growing team is committed to tackling them.