No Laughing Matter as Net Zero Nutters Target Your Anaesthetics and Painkillers
by Chris Morrison 2 February 2025 9:00 AM
First they came for your cars, then your gas boilers, travel, food and farms. Now the Net Zero nutters, using their preposterous and invented climate emergency scare, have medicines, anaesthetics and painkillers in their crosshairs. Moves are afoot to reduce the use of popular, cheap, safe and effective nitrous oxide in the UK and replace it with substitutes such as methoxyflurane, a gas long banned in the United States following concerns about kidney and liver damage. Of course any science that disputes climate Armageddon is of little intertest to political activists, but the rest of us might be interested to note recent findings that found any ‘global warming’ caused by gases used by anaesthetists was “negligible and cannot be measured or felt”.
Nitrous oxide, sometimes known as laughing gas, is in common use in dentistry and maternity wards. It is carried on ambulances and is considered a very safe and effective analgesic medicine. But the UK National Health Service (NHS) has made a very silly pledge to be carbon Net Zero by 2040. According to the Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM), the use of anaesthetics, which also include isoflurane, desflurane and sevoflurane, has been identified as a “carbon hotspot“. The NHS Long Term Plan is said to highlight these gases “as an area for action” and the RCEM says consideration should be given to the use of alternatives “where feasible and safe to do so”. The Royal College of Anaesthetists recently reported that many practitioners had moved away from routine nitrous oxide use in general anaesthesia, including in previous “high-usage” areas.
Methoxyflurane is marketed under the brand name Penthrox and has had a chequered medical past. Common in hospitals from the 1960s, it fell out of favour after the concerns about kidney and liver damage were raised. A number of other worries mean that it is best used only on patients who are in reasonable health. It remains banned in the United States, but is available in New Zealand, Australia, Ireland and the UK.
https://dailysceptic.org/2025/02/02/no-laughing-matter-as-net-zero-nutters-target-your-anaesthetics-and-painkillers/
