After 18 months of negotiations, in November 2024, representatives of 200 nations failed to come to agreement around the terms of a multilateral, legally binding treaty to mitigate the harms of plastic pollution. A coalition of oil-producing nations and industry groups opposed capping plastic production, arguing that efforts should only focus on managing waste. Proposed text for the treaty also included a blanket exemption of plastic products for medical and health uses and responses to public health emergencies. In this seminar, we will examine discourses around single-use, disposable, plastic products in healthcare including the ways that medically-related industry has promoted the idea that these products are not only convenient, but necessary. We will discuss the need for counter-measures to resist efforts by the petrochemical industry to undermine the precautionary principle, explore how to support other stakeholders, like engineers and manufacturers exploring alternatives to single-use plastics, and ask how healthcare can play a leading role in mitigating the health harms of plastic.
Speaker
Dr. Jeremy Greene, Professor, Medicine and History of Medicine Director, Institute of the History of Medicine, founding Director, Center for Medical Humanities and Social Medicine, Johns Hopkins University