Medicine in the Post-Oil World
Strategies for Delivering Medical Care
In a World without Cheap Energy ("Powerdown Medicine")

January 3, 2007 -- I'm just getting started thinking about this... And I'm not the only one.

Johnston et al, in Modern Medicine And Fossil Fuel Resources observe that the story of oil in the 21st century is like that of the boy who cried wolf, the point being that finally the wolf did come.

Walter Youngquist writes in The post-petroleum paradigm -- and population:

Reaching and passing the peak of world oil production will be the most important happening in human history to date, affecting more people in more ways than any other event. It will happen, and during the lives of most people now living.
Johnston continues this theme:
Increasing scarcity and expense of fossil fuels will present medicine with great challenges, especially at its high-tech end... Petroleum-based products are used all throughout the medical sector.

Following these lines of thought, various corollaries suggest themselves...

  • High-tech interventions will be available only to a shrinking elite.
  • Community and locality will grow in importance.
  • In medical care, labor will overtake capital (the way it does in the third world).
  • There will be fewer disposables and more reuse. When oil is scarce, plastic is expensive.
  • Let's learn from the Cubans. I intend to travel there. This will be a reverse foreign aid mission -- the evidence says these folks are the experts. (Ahem, I thought of this before Michael Moore did.)
  • It won't be all bad -- if we're smart about it, we'll use it as an opportunity to emphasize lifestyle and prevention. When healthcare technology gets scarce, it will be better not to get sick in the first place.
Lots of work to be done!

Table of Contents