Contemporary Authors

• Planetary Overload: Global Environmental Change and the Health of the Human Species Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1993
• Climate Change and Human Health World Health Organization (Geneva, Switzerland), 1996
• Health at the Crossroads: Transport Policy and Urban Health Wiley (New York, NY), 1997
• Human Frontiers, Environments, and Disease: Past Patterns, Uncertain Futures Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 2001
• Environmental Change, Climate, and Health: Issues and Research Methods Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 2002
• Climate Change and Human Health: Risks and Responses World Health Organization (Geneva, Switzerland), 2003
• Ecosystems and Human Well-being: Health Synthesis World Health Organization (Geneva, Switzerland), 2005
• Climate Change and the Health of Nations: Famines, Fevers, and the Fate of Populations Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 2017

1. Climate change and the health of nations : famines, fevers, and the fate of populations LCCN 2016034533 Type of material Book Personal name McMichael, A. J. (Anthony J.), author. Main title Climate change and the health of nations : famines, fevers, and the fate of populations / Tony McMichael with Alistair Woodward and Cameron Muir. Published/Produced New York, NY, United States of America : Oxford University Press, [2017] Projected pub date 1111 Description pages cm ISBN 9780190262952 CALL NUMBER GF71 .M46 2017 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms 2. Ecosystems and human well-being : health synthesis LCCN 2006377334 Type of material Book Main title Ecosystems and human well-being : health synthesis / core writing team, Carlos Corvalan, Simon Hales, Anthony McMichael. Published/Created [Geneva, Switzerland] : World Health Organization, c2005. Description 53 p. : col. ill., col. maps ; 28 cm. ISBN 9241563095 Links http://www.who.int/globalchange/ecosystems/ecosys.pdf CALL NUMBER HC79.E5 E298 2005 LANDOVR Copy 1 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms - STORED OFFSITE 3. Climate change and human health : risks and responses LCCN 2004456823 Type of material Book Main title Climate change and human health : risks and responses / editors, A.J. McMichael ... [et al.]. Published/Created Geneva : World Health Organization, 2003. Description xi, 322 p. : ill. ; 26 cm. ISBN 924156248X CALL NUMBER RA793 .C582 2003 Copy 1 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms 4. Environmental change, climate, and health : issues and research methods LCCN 2001052884 Type of material Book Main title Environmental change, climate, and health : issues and research methods / edited by P. Martens, A.J. McMichael. Published/Created Cambridge, UK ; New York : Cambridge University Press, c2002. Description xiii, 338 p. : ill. (some col.), maps ; 26 cm. ISBN 0521782368 Links Sample text http://www.loc.gov/catdir/samples/cam033/2001052884.html Publisher description http://www.loc.gov/catdir/description/cam022/2001052884.html Table of contents http://www.loc.gov/catdir/toc/cam021/2001052884.html Contributor biographical information http://www.loc.gov/catdir/enhancements/fy0731/2001052884-b.html CALL NUMBER RA566 .E573 2002 FT MEADE Copy 2 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms - STORED OFFSITE 5. Human frontiers, environments, and disease : past patterns, uncertain futures LCCN 2001273445 Type of material Book Personal name McMichael, A. J. (Anthony J.) Main title Human frontiers, environments, and disease : past patterns, uncertain futures / Tony McMichael. Published/Created Cambridge ; New York : Cambridge University Press, c2001. Description xvi, 413 p. : ill., maps ; 25 cm. ISBN 052180311X (hbk.) 0521004942 (pbk.) Links Sample text http://www.loc.gov/catdir/samples/cam031/2001273445.html Publisher description http://www.loc.gov/catdir/description/cam022/2001273445.html Table of contents http://www.loc.gov/catdir/toc/cam026/2001273445.html Contributor biographical information http://www.loc.gov/catdir/enhancements/fy0731/2001273445-b.html CALL NUMBER RA441 .M427 2001 FT MEADE Copy 2 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms - STORED OFFSITE 6. Health at the crossroads : transport policy and urban health LCCN 96004969 Type of material Book Meeting name London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine Public Health Forum (5th : 1995 : London, England) Main title Health at the crossroads : transport policy and urban health / edited by Tony Fletcher and Anthony J. McMichael. Published/Created Chichester ; New York : J. Wiley, c1997. Description xiv, 339 p. : ill. ; 24 cm. ISBN 0471962724 (hbk : alk. paper) Links Publisher description http://www.loc.gov/catdir/description/wiley031/96004969.html Table of Contents http://www.loc.gov/catdir/toc/onix01/96004969.html CALL NUMBER RA615 .L66 1995 Copy 1 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms 7. Climate change and human health LCCN 99224270 Type of material Book Main title Climate change and human health / editors, A.J. McMichael ... [et.al.]. Published/Created Geneva : World Health Organization, 1996. Description xvii, 297 p. : ill. ; 26 cm. CALL NUMBER RA793 .C58 1996 Copy 1 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms 8. Planetary overload : global environmental change and the health of the human species LCCN 92038292 Type of material Book Personal name McMichael, A. J. (Anthony J.) Main title Planetary overload : global environmental change and the health of the human species / A.J. McMichael. Published/Created Cambridge [England] ; New York, NY, USA : Cambridge University Press, 1993. Description xvi, 352 p. : ill. ; 23 cm. ISBN 0521441382 (hardback) 0521457599 (paperback) Links Sample text http://www.loc.gov/catdir/samples/cam031/92038292.html Publisher description http://www.loc.gov/catdir/description/cam025/92038292.html Table of contents http://www.loc.gov/catdir/toc/cam026/92038292.html CALL NUMBER RA565 .M384 1993 Copy 1 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms CALL NUMBER RA565 .M384 1993 Copy 2 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms

• Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_McMichael

  Tony McMichael
  From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
  Anthony John McMichael, MBBS, PhD (3 October 1942 – 26 September 2014) was an Australian epidemiologist who retired from the Australian National University in 2012.

  Contents [hide]
  1 Background
  2 Scholarly contributions
  3 Honours
  4 Publications
  5 References
  6 External links
  Background[edit]
  McMichael grew up in Adelaide, and graduated in medicine from the University of Adelaide (1961-1967). He showed early awareness of the need to address injustice and defend the disadvantaged. As a student he spent a summer volunteering at a leprosy colony in New Delhi, India where he saw how patients were treated as social outcasts suffering from the stigma of a disfiguring disease although they were no longer contagious. This experience made him committed to tackling prejudice and also gave him a compelling insight into the need to address the causes of disease to prevent premature death and disability. The following year, whilst on a similar service trip to Papua New Guinea he met social sciences student Judith Healy, whom he married shortly after graduation. They had 2 children. He was elected as president of the National Union of Students based in Melbourne, during the globally tumultuous year of 1968.

  After 18 months in general practice, he was invited to become the PhD student of Professor Basil Hetzel at the new department of social and preventive medicine, Monash University in Victoria, graduating in 1972. Studying factors that influenced the mental health of undergraduate students, he gained skills in epidemiological research which stood him in good stead throughout his professional career. He also showed early evidence of independent inquiry informed by reading the works of thinkers such as Paul R. Ehrlich and Anne H. Ehrlich who questioned the capacity of the Earth to support a growing world population with increasing consumption of resources.

  He then worked at the School of Public Health at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, studying the health of workers in the tyre industry. Returning to Australia he worked for CSIRO and then became the Foundation Chair in Occupational and Environmental Health at the University of Adelaide from 1986 until 1994. From 1994-2001 he was Professor of Epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, before returning to Australia to follow Prof Bob Douglas] as the director of the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health at the Australian National University in Canberra. Most recently he held an NHMRC Australia Fellowship at the ANU, where he also ran the Environment, Climate, and Health research program.

  Scholarly contributions[edit]
  McMichael coined the term the 'Healthy Worker Effect' (later extended by others to similar phenomena such as the 'Healthy Migrant effect'), a statistical fiction that tended to overestimate the good health of populations working in noxious industries. His study established a link between benzene exposure and leukemia among tyre builders.[1][2]

  While working in South Australia, he uncovered a link between lead pollution and impaired childhood neurocognitive development around an industrial plant in Port Pirie.[3] His work, and two other studies, were instrumental in the phasing out of lead in more than 100 countries.[4] Increasingly interested in underlying causes of illness, he exposed the effects of passive smoking, and also the effects of UV radiation in creating lower rates of multiple sclerosis, which has a higher incidence in populations towards the poles. UV exposure lessens immune system activity, including misdirected “autoimmune” attacks on the body tissues.[5]

  In later years, and particularly after returning to Australia in 2001, he worked on the health effects of climate change.[6] He had always been influenced by ideas of anthropogenic crises, first population growth and latterly of general planetary overload. He argued that a warming world would have significant negative effects on human health. He said “Climate change is not just about disruptions to the local economy or loss of jobs or loss of iconic species. It’s actually about weakening the foundations the life support systems that we depend on as a human species.”[7] His team showed that tens of thousands of people were dying each year from climate-induced flooding, malnutrition, and infectious diseases.[8]

  Honours[edit]
  Officer of the Order of Australia, 2011
  Member, US National Academy of Sciences, 2011
  Shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore and world scientists
  Fellow, Academy of Technical Science and Engineering
  Fellow, Australian Faculty of Public Health Medicine
  John R. Goldsmith award, outstanding contributions to environmental epidemiology, ISEE (2000)
  Publications[edit]
  Tony McMichael published over 300 peer-reviewed papers, 160 book chapters and two sole-author books: Planetary Overload: Global Environmental Change and Human Health (1993), and Human Frontiers, Environments and Disease: Past Patterns, Uncertain Futures (2001). Human Frontiers, Environments and Disease: Past Patterns, Uncertain Futures Human Frontiers, Environments and Disease: Past Patterns, Uncertain Futures (2001) (2001). He has several co-authored or edited books.

  In 2012 a Festschrift was held to commemorate his career.[9] In 2015, the formal written festchrift was published, called "Health of People, Places and Planet. Reflections based on Tony McMichael’s four decades of contribution to epidemiological understanding. It is available, as an electronic copy, for free from ANU Press. It was co-edited by Colin Butler, Jane Dixon and Tony Capon.

  His last book was published by Oxford University Press in 2017. Anthony J McMichael with Alistair Woodward & Cameron Muir, Climate Change and the Health of Nations: Famines, Fevers, and the Fate of Populations. https://global.oup.com/academic/product/climate-change-and-the-health-of-nations-9780190262952?cc=au&lang=en&

  The book argues that while natural climate change has occurred throughout human history, and populations mostly have adapted to its vicissitudes, we have now entered the Anthropocene era of very rapid and perilous global warming due to greenhouse gas emissions caused by human activity. McMichael, a renowned epidemiologist and a pioneer in explaining the impacts of climate change on human health, presents a sweeping and authoritative analysis of how human societies are shaped by climate events. He warns us that human-kind now faces dramatically amplified risks to health, and indeed survival, if we continue on the current global warming trajectory.

• PNAS - http://www.pnas.org/content/109/18/6787.full

  Quoted in Sidelights: “McMichael described this misleading comparison and its result as the ‘healthy worker’ effect,” “The term soon led to spinoffs—such as the ‘healthy migrant’ and ‘healthy parent’ effects—and remains an active area of study to this day.” “concluded that tens of thousands of people were dying each year from climate-induced flooding, malnutrition, and infectious diseases,” “This was the first paper to make an estimation of how many deaths from at least a subset of climate-sensitive health outcomes are attributable to climate change.”

  Profile of Anthony J. McMichael
  Sujata Gupta, Freelance Science Writer
  ExtractFull TextAuthors & InfoFiguresMetricsRelated ContentPDF
  Smoking causes lung cancer. Diets high in fat and cholesterol clog arteries. Exercise is good for the heart. These links between behavior and disease represent the end products of epidemiological studies involving thousands of people that have taken years, even decades, to complete. But what happens when health issues crop up without a clear cause, or when the causes are too numerous to parse out? Traditionally, epidemiologists have steered clear of such relationships. By doing so, however, they ignore many of the world’s most pressing public health problems, says Anthony McMichael, head of the Environment, Climate, and Health research program at Australian National University in Canberra. Look, he says, at obesity. “You can’t get a single-factor explanation for why levels of obesity are rising,” he says. “It simply is not a smoking-causes-lung-cancer type relationship.”

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  Anthony J. McMichael.

  McMichael, elected in 2011 to the National Academy of Sciences, is a strong proponent of expanding epidemiology research from individual- to population-level studies. To this day, researchers focus more on the environmental and economic repercussions of a warming world than on how such changes might affect human health—a potentially dangerous distraction, he says.

  To remedy that oversight, McMichael’s Inaugural Article explores how major climatic events over the past 12,000 years have influenced human health and survival, and how even mild to moderate climate change can lead to the disruption and collapse of societies (1). With the global temperature likely to increase by 3 °C to 4 °C over the next 100 years—considerably more than the fraction-of-a-degree fluctuations that influenced the outbreak and spread of the bubonic plague in mid-14th century Europe—the risk to human health is graver than we realized, he says. “Climate change is not just about disruptions to the local economy or loss of jobs or loss of iconic species. It’s actually about weakening the foundations the life support systems that we depend on as a human species.”

  Next Section
  From Stethoscopes to Laboratory Coats
  Born to an architect and homemaker during World War II in Adelaide, Australia, McMichael describes his childhood as idyllic. Life was spent outdoors on bicycles, on beaches, and exploring woodlands. He excelled academically early in life, finishing first in his primary school class at age 7 and leading his high school class as head prefect.

  In 1961, McMichael entered the University of Adelaide in South Australia to study medicine. Following an older classmate’s lead, McMichael spent a summer volunteering at a leprosy colony in New Delhi, India. The patients in the colony were outcasts, he says, even though they were no longer contagious. McMichael and his fellow volunteers became committed to dispelling the prejudice, and the experience made it clear that he did not have to become “a stethoscope-carrying doctor” to contribute to people’s health. The following year, McMichael went on a similar service trip to Papua New Guinea—a serendipitous choice. On that trip, he met social sciences student Judith Healy, whom he married shortly after graduation.

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  Training in Classic Epidemiology
  Unsure of how to proceed, McMichael took a gap year upon graduation, serving as president of the National Union of Australian University Students in Melbourne. There, he met up with Basil Hetzel, a professor he had admired at Adelaide University. Hetzel had recently been appointed to launch a department of social and preventive medicine at Monash University in Victoria and invited McMichael to become one of his doctoral students. McMichael accepted the offer and began studying factors that influenced the mental health of undergraduate students—a project that required recruiting incoming freshmen and developing questionnaires to track their wellbeing.

  While that work taught McMichael how to conduct a classic epidemiological study, his readings challenged him to view the field through a broader lens. He recalls being deeply influenced by Paul and Anne Ehrlich’s book Population, Resources, Environment (2). The Ehrlichs, McMichael says, were among the first to ask how long the earth could sustain the growing human population and their living habits. By chance, McMichael discussed the book with a former university classmate who had become the editor of a national newspaper, Nation Review. The editor asked McMichael to write a book review, a gig that led to a regular newspaper column. As a columnist, McMichael rapidly became an expert in the emerging field of ecoepidemiology. “I called the column Spaceship Earth to make the point that it’s a closed system with limited resources, and if you throw rubbish around, it all collects inside the station,” he says.

  By the time McMichael finished his doctorate in 1972, he had become fascinated by the ideas of Pulitzer Prize-winning author and microbiologist René Dubos. Dubos was among the first to use the phrase “think globally, act locally,” which encourages responding to global problems in a local context. McMichael wrote Dubos a letter inquiring about a possible job. Dubos replied saying he had recently retired but had passed the letter on to a colleague. The letter would change hands several more times before arriving at the School of Public Health at the University of North Carolina (UNC) in Chapel Hill. By chance, UNC had just landed a major contract with the United States Rubber and Tire Manufacturing Industry and Union, and needed medically qualified epidemiologists to study the health of workers in the tire industry. They asked McMichael to begin immediately.

  At UNC, McMichael became interested in evaluating illness and death rates in a large population of tire workers. He found that, despite the occupational exposure risks the workers faced, their health indices always looked statistically better than that of the larger population. McMichael realized that that misconception arose because, in many studies, the workers were being compared with a general population, including mentally or physically ill individuals who could not hold down a job. McMichael described this misleading comparison and its result as the “healthy worker” effect (3). The term soon led to spinoffs—such as the “healthy migrant” and “healthy parent” effects—and remains an active area of study to this day.

  In 1976, McMichael reconnected with Hetzel, who offered him a job as a research scientist with the Division of Human Nutrition, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization in Adelaide. McMichael jumped at the opportunity to collaborate with his old advisor while allowing his two young children to grow up near their grandparents in his old hometown.

  Previous Section
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  Broadening Relationships
  The job was initially straightforward. McMichael supervised doctoral students studying the links between diet and health ailments such as breast cancer and cardiovascular disease. However, he soon got drawn into another project, one that would extend over the next decade. An acquaintance working for the South Australian Health Department was trying to figure out why so many women experienced stillbirths in the town of Port Pirie, home to the largest lead smelter in the southern hemisphere. He asked McMichael and Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization to help solve the puzzle.

  Scientists already knew that lead could cause reproductive problems in rodents and other mammals, and historic documents showed that lead had traditionally been used as an abortion agent (4, 5). McMichael’s task was to determine if Port Pirie’s smelter was indeed to blame for the town’s high number of stillbirths. He and colleagues recruited pregnant women from in and around the town and monitored their blood lead levels. The researchers then tested the umbilical cord blood of babies carried to term and observed their physical and intellectual development until age 12 years.

  In a seminal paper published in 1988, the researchers analyzed 537 children born between 1979 and 1982 in Port Pirie and showed that the subset of children with elevated blood lead levels scored, on average, 7.2 points lower on a general cognitive test than children with lower lead levels (6). The public health community was galvanized into action. McMichael’s findings triggered a massive cleanup effort in Port Pirie and influenced the tightening of lead exposure guidelines worldwide.

  McMichael’s work in Port Pirie solidified his interest in studying the intersection between health and the environment. His timing was impeccable. In 1987, the Montreal Protocol established guidelines for reducing atmospheric ozone depletion. More than an environmental catastrophe, McMichael realized that ozone depletion could also compromise human health. “If humans are exposed to more ultraviolet radiation because of ozone depletion, skin cancer rates were going to go up, as were cataracts of the eye,” McMichael surmised. Climate change was also beginning to emerge as a looming problem. The United Nations established the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 1988.

  That confluence of events prompted McMichael, then a professor of occupational and environmental health at the University of Adelaide, to begin work on his first book, Planetary Overload (7). In that book, McMichael focused on five major environmental problems arising from unrestrained population growth and intensified economic activities—climate change, ozone depletion, land degradation and impairment of food production, loss of biodiversity, and burgeoning cities—and how those factors could impede human health.

  The book was ahead of its time. “I got a devastating letter from the health sciences editor at Oxford University Press saying that they weren’t at all interested and it all seemed rather speculative and a bit fantasy-like, the sort of thing that could only be written from the vantage point of a privileged society member, one who didn’t have to see children dying from diarrhea and malarial disease every day,” McMichael recalls.

  Luckily, on a trip to London, McMichael met up with Andrew Haines, another public health researcher studying the link between climate change and human health. Haines had recently been asked by Cambridge University Press to write a book on the topic but did not have the time, so he suggested that McMichael look into taking on the project. Today, Planetary Overload remains a decisive work on the topic and is often assigned reading for college students. It also positioned McMichael as a leader in the field. In 1993, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change asked him to chair the health risk assessment chapter team for its second assessment report (8).

  Previous Section
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  Urging Uptake Among Colleagues
  By the 1990s, McMichael had begun encouraging current and future epidemiologists to broaden the scope of the field (9). In a paper titled “Prisoners of the Proximate,” McMichael urges epidemiologists to look beyond problems close at hand and focus on larger, underlying issues (10). McMichael also engaged in active research to explore why populations living closer to the poles have higher rates of multiple sclerosis, an autoimmune disorder. A case in point: multiple sclerosis rates are four to five times lower in Queensland than Tasmania, which is 20 degrees closer to the South Pole. McMichael and colleagues honed in on a likely cause: UV radiation. Previous studies had shown that rodents exposed to higher UV levels have suppressed immune systems (11). Moreover, UV exposure is greater the further you are from the poles. That suggested populations living closer to the Equator have lower rates of MS because UV exposure lessens immune system activity, including misdirected “autoimmune” attacks on the body tissues (12).

  That type of work influenced the theme of McMichael’s second book, Human Frontiers, Environments and Disease (13). In that book, McMichael evaluates how technological and environmental changes have already altered historic patterns of disease and how those changes could be amplified in the future.

  Previous Section
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  Honing in on Climate Change
  In 2001, McMichael moved back to Australia to direct the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health at the Australian National University. That same year, the World Health Organization asked him to head an effort to estimate the annual global burden of disease attributable to climatic changes that had occurred by the year 2000. That enormous undertaking made McMichael and his team aware of ailments that could—and could not—be included in such a calculation. For instance, it was possible to estimate climatic influences on malnutrition, starvation, and the spread of certain infectious diseases, but not heat-wave impacts in poorly housed populations, suicide rates, or mental health problems. The team concluded that tens of thousands of people were dying each year from climate-induced flooding, malnutrition, and infectious diseases (14). “The real numbers will be a lot higher,” McMichael says, “but this was the first paper to make an estimation of how many deaths from at least a subset of climate-sensitive health outcomes are attributable to climate change.”

  In 2007, McMichael stepped down as Centre Director to head the Environment, Climate and Health Research Program within the same center. In that role, he has been studying a widening range of health risks from climatic changes, modeling likely future risks, and developing a research program to evaluate strategies populations can adopt to cope with such changes.

  One groundbreaking study evaluated how greenhouse gas emissions from livestock production could be reduced if people in richer countries ate less meat, a shift that could potentially improve their health. “When I grew up in the 1950s, Australians typically ate three meat meals a day: lamb chop for breakfast, cold meat sandwiches for lunch, and roast beef or equivalent in the evening. That was just taken for granted,” McMichael says. To lock in emissions at 2005 levels, McMichael and colleagues proposed a strategy that would require people in rich countries to reduce meat consumption while people in poor countries increase consumption (15).

  McMichael’s convictions have strengthened over the course of his career. The global environmental problem facing societies worldwide is nothing short of biblical, he now says. “The broad health-risk categories of undernutrition and starvation, infectious disease outbreaks, and conflict and warfare,” he writes in his Inaugural Article, “are the most accessible for historical study in relation to climate.” These population-level health-outcome categories, he says, relate closely to the well known biblical Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: famine, pestilence, conquest, and warfare.

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  Footnotes
  This is a Profile of a recently elected member of the National Academy of Sciences to accompany the member's Inaugural Article on page 4730 in issue 13 of volume 109.

  Previous Section

  References
  ↵ McMichael AJ (2012) Insights from past millennia into climatic impacts on human health and survival. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 109:4730–4737. Abstract/FREE Full Text
  ↵ Ehrlich PR, Ehrlich AH (1970) Population, Resources, Environment: Issues in Human Ecology (WH Freeman, San Francisco). Google Scholar
  ↵ McMichael AJ (1976) Standardized mortality ratios and the “healthy worker effect”: Scratching beneath the surface. J Occup Med 18:165–168. MedlineWeb of ScienceGoogle Scholar
  ↵ Barrett JR (2008) Prenatal lead exposure in mice: Age-related, sex-specific effects observed. Environ Health Perspect 116:A129–A129. MedlineGoogle Scholar
  ↵ Tong S, von Schirnding YE, Prapamontol T (2000) Environmental lead exposure: A public health problem of global dimensions. Bull World Health Organ 78:1068–1077. MedlineWeb of ScienceGoogle Scholar
  ↵ McMichael AJ, et al. (1988) Port Pirie Cohort Study: Environmental exposure to lead and children’s abilities at the age of four years. N Engl J Med 319:468–475. MedlineWeb of ScienceGoogle Scholar
  ↵ McMichael AJ (1993) Planetary Overload: Global Environmental Change and the Health of the Human Species (Cambridge Univ Press, Cambridge, UK). Google Scholar
  ↵ McMichael AJ, et al. (1996) in Human Population Health. Report of Working Group II (Impacts), Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: Second Assessment Report, eds Watson R, Moss R (Cambridge Univ Press, Cambridge, UK). Google Scholar
  ↵ McMichael AJ (1993) Global environmental change and human population health: A conceptual and scientific challenge for epidemiology. Int J Epidemiol 22:1–8. FREE Full Text
  ↵ McMichael AJ (1999) Prisoners of the proximate: Loosening the constraints on epidemiology in an age of change. Am J Epidemiol 149:887–897. Abstract/FREE Full Text
  ↵ Jeevan A, Kripke ML (1989) Effect of a single exposure to ultraviolet radiation on Mycobacterium bovis bacillus Calmette-Guerin infection in mice. J Immunol 143:2837–2843. Abstract
  ↵ McMichael AJ, Hall AJ (1997) Does immunosuppressive ultraviolet radiation explain the latitude gradient for multiple sclerosis? Epidemiology 8:642–645. CrossRefMedlineWeb of ScienceGoogle Scholar
  ↵ McMichael AJ (2001) Human Frontiers, Environments and Disease: Past Patterns, Uncertain Futures (Cambridge Univ Press, Cambridge, UK). Google Scholar
  ↵ McMichael AJ, et al. (2004) in Comparative Quantification of Health Risks: Global and Regional Burden of Disease Due to Selected Major Risk Factors, Climate Change, eds Ezzati M, Lopez AD, Rodgers A, Mathers C (WHO, Geneva), pp 1543–1650. Google Scholar
  ↵ McMichael AJ, Powles JW, Butler CD, Uauy R (2007) Food, livestock production, energy, climate change, and health. Lancet 370:1253–1263. CrossRefMedlineGoogle Scholar

• Guardian - https://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/oct/13/tony-mcmichael

  Quoted in Sidelights: “Although this emerging understanding of the complex links between global ecology and human health involved various academic and research institutions, Tony was the most senior health expert in the team and, by virtue of his personality, powers of persuasion and, especially, his highly respected status in epidemiology, he was able to legitimise this topic as a field of research,”
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  Tony McMichael obituary
  Australian public health researcher who established the link between climate change and disease
  Tony McMichael, public health researcher
  Analysis of a diverse range of data helped Tony McMichael show that epidemiological techniques can be applied to global environmental change
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  Martin McKee and Colin Butler
  Monday 13 October 2014 13.56 EDT First published on Monday 13 October 2014 13.56 EDT
  The scope of epidemiology has expanded dramatically over the past 150 years, from its origins seeking to understand the causes of epidemic diseases, through the role of specific risk factors in non-communicable diseases, to the really big, and complex, questions facing humanity, and in some cases threatening its very survival. Tony McMichael, who has died aged 71, after complications of pneumonia, pioneered this third strand, showing how epidemiological techniques could be applied to global environmental change.

  Although, by the 1980s, he had long been concerned about what he termed "planetary overload" (later the title of one of his bestselling books), whereby the Earth is no longer able to sustain its expanding population with its increasing desire to consume natural resources and degrade the environment, it was not obvious how the debate could be shifted from speculation to empirical evidence.

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  Tony developed conceptual models of the global ecosystem, refined the methods needed to understand it and analysed an array of data to quantify the effects on human health of climate change that many suspected but that could not yet be measured. These included the impact of changes in the seasonal variation of deaths among older people in temperate climates and the distribution of insect vectors of diseases, such as Ross River virus in his native Australia.

  Although this emerging understanding of the complex links between global ecology and human health involved various academic and research institutions, Tony was the most senior health expert in the team and, by virtue of his personality, powers of persuasion and, especially, his highly respected status in epidemiology, he was able to legitimise this topic as a field of research.

  He was an obvious choice to chair the committee assessing health risks for the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change between 1993 and 1996, during which time he moved to the UK, becoming professor of epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in 1994. In 2001 he returned to Australia to take over as head of the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health at the Australian National University in Canberra. There, he added greatly to understanding of the complex interaction between climate and infectious disease, researching topics such as the association between the El Niño phenomenon and the pattern of dengue fever in Thailand.

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  This research subsequently informed the 2013 report of the World Health Organisation's tropical diseases research programme on the combined climatic, environmental, agricultural and nutritional influences on the emergence of infectious disease, which he chaired after stepping down as director of the centre in Canberra in 2007.

  Although Tony's arguments were based on solid research, he also recognised that publications in peer-reviewed journals, of which he published more than 300, would not in themselves lead to action. He was on the board of several NGOs, was a tireless advocate for action on climate and health and, just before his death, was a lead author of an open letter to the Australian prime minister Tony Abbott, calling for climate change and health to be placed on the G20 agenda. Given the hostility to such a move among the few people who, for whatever reason, still refuse to accept the international consensus on the causes of climate change, he was amused when one accused him of being a scurrilous fascist, and another, a socialist lackey.

  Born in Adelaide, South Australia, son of David McMichael, an architect, and Catherine Padman, Tony excelled at St Peter's college, an Anglican boys' school. Although there was no tradition of medicine in the family, he moved seamlessly to the medical school of the University of Adelaide. Even at that stage, his curiosity about the world was apparent and, in those days before low-cost international flights, he took slow boats to India – where his time in a leper colony exposed him to the unequal distribution of resources on this planet and the discrimination experienced by some of its most vulnerable inhabitants – and, later, to Papua New Guinea, where he met Judith Healy, whom he would marry in 1967, the year he graduated.

  He then took a year away from medicine to become president of the National Union of Australian University Students. This was an exciting time to be a student leader and he made many valuable political connections that he was able to draw on later.

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  After a brief period in general practice, Tony enrolled as the first PhD student in epidemiology at Monash University, Melbourne, graduating in 1972. Correspondence with the microbiologist turned global health ecologist René Dubos led Tony to postdoctoral work at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he demonstrated the importance of the "healthy worker effect", whereby those who are exposed to hazards at work may, paradoxically, have better outcomes than the general population, either because they are selected for employment, or because they self-select into certain occupations, on account of their better initial health.

  Both there, and after his return to Australia, at the division of human nutrition at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation and later as the first holder of the foundation chair of occupational and environmental health at the University of Adelaide in 1986, Tony established his reputation as a first-class epidemiologist, generating knowledge on a diverse range of topics.

  For years, the question of whether exposure to lead, then widespread in paints and water pipes, affected children's neurological development, remained unanswered. Tony led a study in Port Pirie, South Australia, home to the largest lead smelter in the southern hemisphere. He showed that exposure to lead varied greatly within the community, depending not only on the proximity of the child's home to the smelter but the concentration of lead in house dust and soil. The children were followed up with detailed developmental assessments until the age of 12. The results provided definitive evidence of the dangers of lead and were widely cited in the campaign to remove it from petrol.

  Tony also chaired a working party for the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council that produced a seminal report on passive smoking, frequently cited in the campaign to ban smoking in public places. These achievements alone would have guaranteed him a place in the epidemiological hall of fame. However, it was his achievements from the late 1980s onwards for which he will be best remembered.

  Tony received many awards, among them appointment as an officer of the Order of Australia and election to the UK Academy of Medical Sciences and the US National Academy of Sciences.

  He is survived by Judith, a health policy researcher at the Australian National University, their two daughters, Anna and Celia, and his brothers, Philip and Robert. A sister, Alison, predeceased him.

  • Anthony John McMichael, epidemiologist, born 3 October 1942; died 26 September 2014

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• London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine - http://blogs.lshtm.ac.uk/alumni/2014/10/03/obituary-professor-tony-mcmichael/

  Obituary: Professor Tony McMichael
  By Alice Perry · October 3, 2014 · LSHTM Alumni Community, Obituary · 1 comment
  Tags: Epidemiology, LSHTM Alumni Community, Obituary
  Tony McMichael, who sadly died in September 2014, was an outstanding and visionary public health scientist who was particularly renowned for his pioneering work on climate change and health.

  He showed early awareness of the need to address injustice and defend the disadvantaged. As a student he spent a summer volunteering at a leprosy colony in New Delhi, India where he saw how patients were treated as social outcasts suffering from the stigma of a disfiguring disease although they were no longer contagious. This experience made him committed to tackling prejudice and also gave him a compelling insight into the need to address the causes of disease to prevent premature death and disability. The following year, whilst on a similar service trip to Papua New Guinea he met social sciences student Judith Healy, whom he married shortly after graduation. He graduated in Medicine from the University of Adelaide in 1967 but rather than going immediately in to clinical medicine he spent a year as President of the National Union of Students in 1968 during a turbulent time in world history. He was subsequently invited to become the PhD student of Professor Basil Hetzel who had recently been appointed to launch a department of social and preventive medicine at Monash University in Victoria and who later became an influential figure in public health. He gained skills in epidemiological research which stood him in good stead throughout his professional career but also showed early evidence of independent enquiry informed by reading the works of thinkers such as Paul and Anne Ehrlich who questioned the capacity of the Earth to support a growing world population with increasing consumption of resources.

  He was fortunate to be offered a position at the University of North Carolina studying the health of workers in the tyre industry. He recognised that workers were often in better health then the general population despite potentially hazardous exposures and coined the term ‘healthy worker’ effect which has become widely used in epidemiology.

  Back in Australia he was asked to investigate the health effects of lead exposure including helping to find out why so many women experienced stillbirths in the town of Port Pirie, home to the largest lead smelter in the southern hemisphere. This work, which was to extend over a decade showed, for example, that children with high lead levels scored substantially lower on tests of cognitive function compared with those with normal levels. The finding resulted in a public outcry and massive efforts to clean up the local environment.

  He also played a leading role in research on the epidemiology of Multiple Sclerosis which demonstrated the marked latitudinal trend of MS prevalence in Australia with rates in Tasmania being 4 or 5 times higher than in Queensland. This research pointed to the possible role of ultraviolet radiation exposure as an immune system modulator.

  Any of these major advances would have been sufficient to guarantee Tony a global reputation as a leading epidemiologist but it is for his work on climate change and health that he became best known and where his long term legacy is greatest. His first book ‘Planetary Overload; Global Environmental Change and Human Health,’ published by Cambridge University Press in 1993 is a classic. It showed how humanity was on an unsustainable course as a result of patterns of resource use, greenhouse gas emissions and population growth. He made the convincing case that human health was underpinned by ecosystem health.

  Around that time he also became extensively engaged in the UN intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and 1993 was asked to chair the health risk assessment chapter team for its second assessment report. He co-edited a major WHO/WMO/UNEP report on climate change and health which appeared in 1996. The World Health Organization also asked him to lead work to estimate the annual global burden of disease attributable to climatic changes that had occurred by the year 2000 and he became immersed in the scientific challenges of estimating impacts across a range of health outcomes. These estimates suggested that over a hundred thousand people a year were already dying as a result of climate change but also pointed to the difficulties of estimating the indirect impacts on outcomes such as mental health.

  From 1994-2001 he was Professor of Epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, before returning to Australia to follow Prof Bob Douglas as director (2001-2006) of the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health. In 2011 he was made an Officer of the Order of Australia, and in the same year was elected to the US National Academy of Sciences.

  Tony published well over 300 peer-reviewed papers and 160 book chapters and two sole-authored books, the second being Human Frontiers, Environments and Disease: Past Patterns, Uncertain Futures(2001). A third When Climates Change. Famines, Fevers and Fates of Populations – Past and Future) was in an advanced stage of preparation at the time of his death and will appear posthumously. He also co-edited nine books.

  A Festschrift to commemorate his extraordinary career was held in 2012. An associated book called ‘ Health of people ,Places and the Planet . Reflections based on Tony McMichael’s four decades of contribution to epidemiological understanding ‘ will appear next year and will be available for free download.

  Tony was a warm and engaging friend to many and an inspirational teacher and lecturer. He was also unafraid to speak out when he disagreed with decisions. Shortly before his death he was the lead author of an open letter in the Medical Journal of Australia to Prime Minister Tony Abbott who had failed to include climate change in the agenda of the G20 meeting. The letter stated ‘We urge you to include human-induced climate change and its serious health consequences on the agenda for this year’s G20 meeting. The world community looks to high-income countries for a strong lead. Current climate trends, driven by global warming, threaten the basis of future economic prosperity, regional political stability and human health’.

  Tony will be sorely missed by many of us but has left a rich and enduring legacy which constitutes a wake up call for humanity to address the underlying threat of global environmental change to the future of humanity. His message though was ultimately a positive one – wise decisions implemented soon can avert disaster. Ensuring that his seminal work lives on will be a major focus of public health in years to come.

  Professor Sir Andrew Haines

• Australian National University - http://www.anu.edu.au/news/all-news/vale-emeritus-professor-tony-mcmichael

  Home » Newsroom » All news » Vale Emeritus Professor Tony McMichael
  Vale Emeritus Professor Tony McMichael
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  The Australian National University community is mourning the death of distinguished Professor and epidemiologist Tony McMichael, who spent his life improving the world's health.

  Emeritus Professor McMichael AO died at his Canberra home. He was 71.

  For more than 40 years, Professor McMichael was a champion of environmental health and he became the world's authority on the impact of climate change on human health.

  The former director of the ANU National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health (NCEPH) was also instrumental in alerting the world to the dangers of passive smoking as well as the health impact of lead pollution, leading to a ban on lead in petrol in more than 100 countries.

  Since the early 1990s, Professor McMichael was a world authority on the risks to human health from climate change, and his work advised both the World Health Organization and the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

  ANU Vice-Chancellor Professor Ian Young AO led the tributes to Professor McMichael, describing his death as a great loss to the University and the world of science.

  "Tony was a fearless and tireless champion of public health, whose work has improved the lives of millions of people around the world," Professor Young said.

  "He was a giant in the field of epidemiology, who cared about people and inspired the best from his colleagues and students. He will be dearly missed.

  "On behalf of the University, I offer my sincere condolences to his family and friends."

  Professor McMichael studied medicine in Adelaide and completed a PhD in epidemiology in 1972, before working as an academic and researcher at the University of North Carolina in the United States, the CSIRO and the University of Adelaide.

  He also served as Professor of epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine between 1994 and 2001.

  Professor McMichael was Director at NCEPH from 2001 to 2007, and he was awarded a prestigious Australia Fellowship by the National Health and Medical Research Council in 2007.

  He was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia in the 2011 Australia Day Honours, and was elected to the US National Academy of Sciences in the same year.

  Professor McMichael published more than 300 peer-reviewed papers and three major books, including his 1993 book Planetary Overload: Global Environmental Change and Human Health, which outlined the threats to health from climate change, ozone depletion, land degradation, loss of biodiversity and the explosion of cities.

  He also served on the Science Advisory Panel to the former Australian government's Climate Change Commission, and was an Honorary Professor of Climate Change and Health at the University of Copenhagen.

  Professor McMichael was an active advocate for his research right up to his death. In the past issue of ANU Reporter, he wrote about the increased role for the Australian Defence Force in a world hit by climate change.

  "As the tempo of extreme weather events increases in a warming world with an energised atmosphere, the need for disaster relief and rebuilding will escalate, both here and within the Asia-Pacific region," he said.

  A keen music lover, Professor McMichael is survived by his wife Judith and two daughters.

  The ANU is planning a memorial service, with details to follow.

  The family has asked for donations to The Climate Institute www.climateinstitute.org.au in lieu of flowers.

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• ANU Reporter - http://reporter.anu.edu.au/obituary-emeritus-professor-tony-mcmichael-ao-1942-2014

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  Emeritus Professor Tony McMichael AO 1942-2014

  Obituary: Emeritus Professor Tony McMichael AO 1942-2014
  Written by Professor Colin Butler and Emeritus Professor Bob Douglas

  Professor Tony McMichael was the world's leading scholar and commentator on the relationship between climate change and human health.

  Many people aspire to make the world a better place, but few have succeeded in this task as he did.

  Following his undergraduate medical student days at Adelaide University, Tony was elected as President of the National Union of Australian University Students (now the NUS).

  After a short stint in general practice he undertook doctoral research studies on the mental wellbeing of university students under the supervision of Professor Basil Hetzel at Monash University.

  Encouraged by René Dubos, the Pulitzer Prize winning visionary for planetary health, Tony undertook post-doctoral studies in occupational health in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

  He returned to Australia to lead an epidemiologic unit in the CSIRO Division of Human Nutrition, which explored nutritional determinants of a range of health outcomes.

  With Hetzel, then head of that division, he published The LS Factor, an important text that had cartoons that enlivened the text.

  Tony, an epidemiologic all-rounder was becoming, by the early '80s, particularly interested in the application of epidemiology to the evolving crisis around climate change.

  In the early '90s, Tony chaired national enquiries into water fluoridation and the health effects of passive smoking, both of which set the scene for national public health action.

  We will miss his inspiration, humour, knowledge and leadership.
  In 1994, Tony accepted arguably the most prestigious chair in epidemiology in the United Kingdom, at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

  He set a cracking pace on research into the relationship between human health and climate change and became the world's leader of this field of research, working closely with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the World Health Organization and various other United Nations agencies.

  We were both delighted when in 2001, Tony was appointed to become Director of the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health at ANU, an influential position he held with distinction for five years.

  During that period, he was in constant demand as the pre-eminent international authority on health aspects of climate change.

  He maintained his administrative and leading scholar responsibilities at ANU and a punishing schedule of international travel, even after the Festschrift that marked his retirement from ANU in late 2012.

  The book associated with the Festschrift, called Health of People, Places and Planet.

  Reflections based on Tony's four decades of contribution to epidemiological understanding will be published next year.

  Shortly before his death, he led an open letter, co-signed by 11 Australian public health leaders, calling on the Prime Minister to include human-induced climate change and its serious health consequences on the agenda for the G20 meeting.

  We will miss his inspiration, humour, knowledge and leadership.

  Tony is survived by his wife Judith, his daughters Anna and Celia, his brother Phil and four grandchildren; Lucian, Darius, Elias and Erica.

• Children - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4928734/

  Logo of children
  Children (Basel). 2014 Dec; 1(3): 457–460.
  Published online 2014 Nov 26. doi: 10.3390/children1030457
  PMCID: PMC4928734
  Tribute to Professor Anthony J. McMichael
  Ashwin Swaminathan,1,2,3,* Robyn M. Lucas,1,4 and David Harley1
  Prof. Helen Leonard, External Editor, Dr. Emma Glasson, External Editor, Dr. Alison Anderson, External Editor, Prof. Robyn Lucas, External Editor, and Dr. Brad Farrant, External Editor
  Author information ► Article notes ► Copyright and License information ►
  Go to:
  Abstract
  Emeritus Professor A. J. “Tony” McMichael (1942–2014) was an internationally renowned and pioneering Australian academic and advocate in epidemiology, who was passionate about understanding the influences of the environment on human health. In an illustrious career spanning more than four decades, he made significant contributions to the scientific community and policy discourse—including ground-breaking research related to the health of children. McMichael was a prolific academic writer with over 300 peer-reviewed papers; 160 book chapters and two sole-authored books. However, his outstanding talent was for integrating complex and seemingly unrelated strands from the environmental and health sciences into a cohesive narrative—and highlighting its relevance to lay persons, scientists and governments alike. He was instrumental in validating this nascent field of research and inspiring many others to follow his lead.

  Keywords: climate change, epidemiology, environment
  Emeritus Professor A. J. “Tony” McMichael (1942–2014) was an internationally renowned and pioneering Australian academic and advocate in epidemiology, who was passionate about understanding the influences of the environment on human health. In an illustrious career spanning more than four decades, he made significant contributions to the scientific community and policy discourse—including two articles in this journal’s Special Issue on the “Impact of Climate Change on Child Health” [1,2].

  McMichael completed his medical degree in 1967, but volunteer trips to assist the poor and ill of India and Papua New Guinea helped him to decide that one need not be a “stethoscope-carrying doctor” to be an effective promoter of health [3]. Elected President of the National Union of (University) Students in the politically and culturally charged period of the late 1960s, he demonstrated an early disposition and skill for influencing important societal debates, experiences that would prove crucial in later policy and advocacy roles.

  McMichael’s classical epidemiological training commenced with doctoral studies at Monash University, Victoria, where he researched factors influencing the mental health of undergraduate students. He became fascinated (and alarmed) by the global issues of sustainability and relationships between ecosystems and health. He wrote on these issues in a national newspaper column entitled “Spaceship Earth”:

  “The Spaceship Earth notion [was] that we live within this closed system, this little planet, and the damage that we do to the environment around us will have ways of coming back to bite us, and particularly as the scale of that damage begins to increase we will start to see systemic changes on a larger scale that would have wider ranging consequences for human health both now and into the future.”

  [4]
  Whilst McMichael’s epidemiological research was not restricted to a specific area of epidemiology or sub-population, some of his most ground-breaking work was directly relevant to children’s health. On return from post-doctoral research in the United States for example, an opportunity arose to investigate the high rates of pregnancy-related complications in the South Australian town of Port Pirie, home to a large lead smelter. Amongst other notable findings, McMichael’s group found a significant inverse association between post-natal infant lead levels and subsequent neuro-cognitive development at age four and later years [5]. This pioneering research significantly influenced the tightening of environmental exposure standards globally and contributed to the accelerated introduction of unleaded petrol.

  McMichael was also instrumental in conducting and broadcasting research investigating the adverse effects of passive exposure to smoke, particularly detrimental to children’s respiratory function. His advocacy extended to giving expert testimony in the Federal Court of Australia, which led to a landmark ruling preventing the tobacco industry from making misleading promotional claims [6].

  Unarguably his greatest scientific and policy contribution (and legacy) was his pioneering research and untiring communication of the health effects of global climate change. His authoritative book entitled Planetary Overload: Global Environmental Change and Human Health (1993) first alerted the world of the looming dangers of a rapidly changing climate, and led to key roles on influential international bodies, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and World Health Organisation.

  McMichael was a prolific academic writer with over 300 peer-reviewed papers, 160 book chapters and two sole-authored books. However, his outstanding talent was for integrating complex and seemingly unrelated strands from the environmental and health sciences into a cohesive narrative—and highlighting its relevance to lay persons, scientists and governments alike. He was instrumental in validating this nascent field of research and inspiring many others to follow his lead.

  For his many and varied contributions, McMichael has been lauded nationally and internationally, including winning the prestigious National Health and Medical Research Council Australia Fellowship (2007), election as a Member of the US National Academy of Sciences (2011) and appointment to the title of Officer of the Order of Australia (2011). His contribution to the IPCC was also commended on the awarding of the 2007 Nobel Prize for Peace to that organisation.

  It is fitting that we should leave the last words of this tribute to the man himself. The following is an excerpt from an open letter authored by McMichael (just weeks before his passing) along with prominent national public health figures, to the Australian Prime Minister with an exhortation for climate change to be discussed at the recently concluded G20 Heads of Government Meeting that took place in Australia:

  “In the long run, the harm to human health from climate change is more than an avoidable burden of suffering, injury, illness and premature death. It signals that our mismanagement of the world’s climate and environment is weakening the foundations of health and longevity.

  This issue warrants urgent consideration at the G20 meeting. The health of present and future generations is at risk from ongoing human-induced climate change.”

  [7]
  Dr Ashwin Swaminathan
  Professor Robyn Lucas
  Associate Professor David Harley
  Go to:
  Conflicts of Interest
  The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

  Go to:
  References
  1. McMichael A. Climate Change and Children: Health Risks of Abatement Inaction, Health Gains from Action. Children. 2014;1:99–106.
  2. Swaminathan A., Lucas R.M., Harley D., McMichael A.J. Will global climate change alter fundamental human immune reactivity: Implications for child health? Children. 2014;1:403–423.
  3. Gupta S. Profile of Anthony J. McMichael. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA. 2012;109:6787–6789. [PMC free article] [PubMed]
  4. NHMRC A Conversation with Professor Tony McMichael (Podcast) [(accessed on 26 October 2014)]; Available online: https://www.nhmrc.gov.au/media/podcasts/2009/conversation-professor-tony-mcmichael.
  5. McMichael A.J., Baghurst P.A., Wigg N.R., Vimpani G.V., Robertson E.F., Roberts R.J. Port Pirie Cohort Study: Environmental exposure to lead and children’s abilities at the age of four years. N. Engl. J. Med. 1988;319:468–475. [PubMed]
  6. Quit Victoria The Australian Federation of Consumer Organisations Inc. v Tobacco Institute of Australia Ltd.: The Morling Judgement. [(accessed on 26 October 2014)]. Available online: http://www.tobaccoinaustralia.org.au/fandi/fandi/c06s3.htm.
  7. McMichael A.J., Leeder S.R., Armstrong B.K., Basten A., Doherty P.C., Douglas R.M., Green A.C., Nossal G.J.V., Shearman D.J.C., Stanley F.J., et al. Open letter to the Hon Tony Abbott MP. Med. J. Aust. 2014;201:252. [PubMed]

• In Memory of Tony McMichael - https://tonymcmichael.wordpress.com/

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  In Memory of Tony McMichael
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  A.J. (Tony) McMichael: a champion for environmental health
  Tony McMichael with Peter Smith, Shanghai, 1990
  Tony McMichael with Peter Smith, Shanghai, 1990 (photo provided by John Potter)

  Tony in Seattle June 2006 (photo provided by John Potter)
  This blog was started on Sept 27, 2014, the day after the sad and untimely passing of Professor Emeritus A.J. (Tony) McMichael, MBBS, PhD. We hope that this website will be one of several places on the web (eg at Croakey) which accumulates stories, links and tributes to Tony. We therefore welcome your comments.

  The essay below has two sections – the first part is a conventional description of Tony’s academic achievements, the second is intended to try to convey how Tony emerged, and why his work is so honoured, important, and still far from complete, in a world in which so many powerful people, especially in the land of Tony’s birth, deny limits to growth and other evidence of what he called Planetary Overload.

  Tony, born in 1942, was an eminent, world-famous Australian epidemiologist who retired in 2012 from the Australian National University, where most recently he held a National Health and Medical Research Council Australia Fellowship (described as “Australia’s most prestigious award for excellence in the fields of health and medical research”).

  He graduated in medicine in 1967 from the University of Adelaide, but rather than follow his colleagues immediately into internship or general practice he was elected as president of the National Union of Australian University Students. After a short stint (about 18 months) in general practice, McMichael then became the first doctoral student in epidemiology at Monash University, in Melbourne. Following a suggestion from the world famous microbiologist turned planetary health ecologist and Pulitzer Prize winning author Rene Dubos Tony first did post graduate work at the School of Public Health at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. There, he achieved early success with his recognition and coinage of the term the Healthy Worker Effect (later extended by others to similar phenomena such as the Healthy Migrant effect.) Returning to Australia he then became the Foundation Chair in Occupational and Environmental Health at the University of Adelaide, recruited by Professor Bob Douglas.

  From 1994-2001 he was Professor of Epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, before returning to Australia to follow Prof Douglas as director (2001-2006) of the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health. In 2011 he was made an Officer of the Order of Australia, and in the same year was elected to the US National Academy of Sciences. Soon after, an insightful open access profile of Tony was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. There is also a tribute in The Lancet (also open access) from 2006, appropriately called “Tony McMichael: a visionary of the environment–health interface”.

  Tony published well over 300 peer-reviewed papers and 160 book chapters and two sole-authored books: Planetary Overload: Global Environmental Change and Human Health (1993), and Human Frontiers, Environments and Disease: Past Patterns, Uncertain Futures (2001). He co-authored two more, including The LS Factor, whose first author was his PhD supervisor, Basil Hetzel. A third sole-authored book (When Climates Change. Famines, Fevers and Fates of Populations – Past and Future) was in an advanced stage of preparation at the time of his passing. He also co-edited nine books, including Climate Change and Human Health, published in 1996 by the World Health Organization (WHO).

  In 2012 a Festschrift was held to commemorate his career. An associated book, called Health of People, Places and Planet. Reflections based on Tony McMichael’s four decades of contribution to epidemiological understanding should appear next year; its 39 chapters (and 9 re-prints) will be available for free download.

  Tony is also a Fellow at Chatham House on Global Health Security. He held honorary positions at the University of Copenhagen and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. He was a long-standing advisor to WHO and had significant roles in three Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment reports and in the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. He had many other Fellowships: the Australian Academy of Technical Sciences and Engineering (2003), the Australasian Faculty of Public Health Medicine (1996), the UK Faculty of Public Health Medicine (1994-2002), the UK Academy of Medical Sciences (1999-2003) and the Public Health Association of Australia (2007).

  He made many contributions to epidemiology and public health, beyond occupational health and climate change. These include to lead and its harm to cognitive development, to smoking (including highly praised court appearances as an expert witness), to cancer, to nutrition, to infectious diseases and to global ecological and environmental change, including, but exceeding that of climate change. He chaired and co-chaired numerous technical working groups across a very broad range of public health topics including national enquiries into water fluoridation and the health effects of passive smoking, both of which set the scene for national public health action. Later he co-chaired a programme for the Special Programme on Research and Training in Tropical Diseases, leading to a WHO Technical Report on the relationship between environmental change and infectious diseases of poverty.

  Tony, like Geoffrey Rose, favoured exploration by epidemiologists of the “causes of the causes”, or to use his phrase, to escape the “prison of the proximate” (cause).

  Tony was an accomplished pianist, one of his daughters, Anna, is a professional violinist. A brother, Philip, is an eminent sociologist. Tony is also survived by his wife, A/Professor Judith Healy, another brother, Robert, daughter, Dr Celia McMichael, and four grandchildren. A CD called Open Polar Sea, to which Anna contributed both as a composer and a performer, is dedicated to Tony. It foreshadows the near future. Tony’s most famous book, Planetary Overload, was dedicated at Anna and Celia, as stewards of the next generation.

  Tony’s legacy includes many appreciative and grateful colleagues and students, in many places and countries. Some of them have become eminent in their right. Many NGOs owe Tony a huge debt, including Drs for the Environment Australia, The Climate Institute, The Australia Institute and the Frank Fenner Foundation.

  How did Tony reach this stage? He had a self-described idyllic childhood, in Adelaide, Australia’s only capital city not to be founded in part by convicts. Perhaps as a result, Adelaide (and South Australia) is regarded by some as having a greater stress on civil service, and less harshness than other major Australian cities and states. Tony’s dad was an architect, his mum a home-maker. Tony’s cleverness was evident in junior school and he took a leadership role, including as a prefect at one of Adelaide’s most prestigious high schools. Then came medical school, where he first encountered Professor Basil Hetzel, and which was marked by at least two trips overseas, one by boat to India (a highlight of which was a visit to a leprosy colony in Delhi, which Tony relocated and revisited almost 50 years later) and one to Australia’s then colony, Papua New Guinea, where he first encountered Judith Healy, who he was soon to marry.

  His leadership role of the student union allowed McMichael to meet many Australians at a formative time who would later become influential. It is reasonable to surmise that this year was a wonderful springboard – but for what? Many NUS leaders have entered politics; instead Tony was to turn to the most political branch of medicine, public health. Being the very first doctoral student of Basil Hetzel at the newly created Department of Social and Preventive Medicine at Monash University (at the time a very young university) must have added to Tony’s sense of self-reliance. Tony was not necessarily bound by the opinions and dogmas of his peers, he could also set his own compass. And he had both the intellect and the courage to do this.

  The late 1960s was a time of intense concern about global population growth. McMichael was influenced not only by Paul Ehrlich and Rene Dubos, but a wide cast of ecological leaders and concerns. These led to a series of essays called “Spaceship Earth” in Nation Review, a weekly newspaper. Two decades later, just when the “cornucopian enchantment” was at its peak (ie despite the Rio Summit the time when the concerns about global population and global environmental impact arguably reached their nadir) he published Planetary Overload. Of all his books, this is the most influential and important.

  By then McMichael’s reputation as a leading epidemiologist was well-established, and this book may have seemed a gamble. Indeed, before its eager acceptance by Cambridge University Press (facilitated by Professor, later Sir Andy Haines) the same manuscript was dismissed by a reviewer for Oxford University Press.

  At that time the integration of Earth System Science and health was scarcely beginning, though the foundation had been laid two decades earlier by Dubos. McMichael has clearly been the most successful and influential thinker to build on that legacy. Today, ecological public health courses are emerging as legitimate and indeed vital.

  McMichael died less than a week after the greatest global climate protest so far in history. US President Obama, assisted by the recent steep fall in price of solar and some other forms of renewable energy appears to genuinely understand the job-creating, economy-saving and civilisation-preserving potential of a rapid transition to clean global energy. If we are to survive as an advanced, wise and compassionate species, the work of people like Tony McMichael will increasingly be recognised as fundamental to the shift that we are engaged in.

  Professor Colin D Butler

  University of Canberra

  ACT Australia

Quoted in Sidelights: “is both academic and urgent in tone,” “Offering hindsight as well as foresight, McMichael makes a strong argument for sustainability.”
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263.46 (Nov. 14, 2016): p45.
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Full Text: 
What constitutes "climate," and can humans learn how to ameliorate climate changes?
Climate Change and the Health of Nations: Famines, Fevers, and the Fate of Populations
Anthony McMichael, with Alistair Woodward and Cameron Muir. Oxford Univ., $39.95 (400p) ISBN 978-0-
19026295-2
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Australian epidemiologist McMichael (1942-2014) focuses on the historical connections between environmental
change and human health over the course of millennia. This earnest volume, published posthumously and finished
with the help of Woodward and Muir, is both academic and urgent in tone. McMichael bemoans the "Faustian
bargain" societies struck ages ago--gaining improvements in personal wealth and comfort at the expense of Earth's
natural resources--before providing "a basic understanding of the climate system and the forces influencing it." He
deftly defines the greenhouse effect and explains such phenomena as El Nino, monsoons, hurricanes, and drought. As
McMichael looks back at past changes in climate and their effects on humans, he notes, for example, the decline of
ancient Mayan cities. Debilitating droughts in the eighth century "resulted in a water-supply crisis, falls in food
production, and great stress on the social and political fabric." Disastrous weather conditions in Europe during the
mid-19th century wreaked similar havoc. He winds down his discussion by examining ways that risks associated
with human-driven climate change can be mitigated, pondering what measures should be taken to avert "looming
environmental and social crises" in the future. Offering hindsight as well as foresight, McMichael makes a strong
argument for sustainability--a straightforward appeal with which many conservationists agree. (Feb.)
Making Sense of Weather and Climate: The Science Behind the Forecasts
Mark Denny. Columbia Univ., $35 (320p) ISBN 978-0-231-17492-3
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Physicist Denny (Lights On!) outlines the differences between weather and climate in this educational volume on
meteorology and meteorological forecasting. In short, he defines climate as local weather patterns averaged over
time. As Denny lays out the particulars, he discusses weather fronts and weather patterns; wind, rain, and fog; and
key features of tornadoes, hurricanes, and thunderstorms. According to Denny, weather is "one of the most relevant
applications of science," affecting people's daily lives in terms of what they wear to work or their means of
transportation. Denny's discussions on cloud formations--there are four basic forms and 10 basic types--prove
particularly fascinating. Cirrus clouds, for example, look like "wispy white filaments," and cumulus clouds resemble
"dense white-gray cauliflowers with well-defined edges." Photographs and illustrations further help readers with
identification. Sections on the use of radar and satellite technologies to collect data are interesting, though the
8/13/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
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narrative predictably lags when talk turns to statistics. Denny sets out to achieve the admirable goal of conveying
"something of the intricacy and depth of atmospheric and oceanic physics" to the lay reader; he succeeds in some
areas more than others. Illus. Jan.)
Source Citation   (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Weatherheads." Publishers Weekly, 14 Nov. 2016, p. 45. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA473459023&it=r&asid=7e7d68f8f5e4cee28f26efba8ede4ac3.
Accessed 13 Aug. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A473459023

"Weatherheads." Publishers Weekly, 14 Nov. 2016, p. 45. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do? p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA473459023&it=r. Accessed 13 Aug. 2017.

• Science
  http://blogs.sciencemag.org/books/2017/01/23/an-epidemiologist-takes-a-long-view-of-our-fraught-relationship-with-the-environment/
  Word count: 956

  Quoted in Sidelights: “The book’s goal is not to make predictions but to motivate change, which McMichael does by bringing into focus humanity’s sensitivity to fluctuations in the natural climate system throughout history. … The book weaves together historical threads, multiple fields of science, and references to art and literature, as if McMichael is gathering the strands of his knowledge. Its power derives from synthesis.”
  Books, Et Al.
  Book and media reviews from the journal Science, edited by Valerie Thompson.
  Valerie Thompson
  Valerie Thompson, Editor

  BOOK CLIMATE CHANGE, HUMAN HEALTH
  An epidemiologist takes a long view of our fraught relationship with the environment
  By Anita Makri

  January 23, 2017

  Climate Change and the Health of Nations: Famines, Fevers, and the Fate of Populations
  Anthony J. McMichael
  Oxford University Press
  2017
  390 pp.
  Purchase this item now
  Last year’s adoption of the Paris Agreement signaled widespread political will to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by midcentury while aiming to keep the rise in global average temperatures to well below 2°C above preindustrial levels. More than 100 nations ratified it, and the mood was optimistic as countries reconvened this year to talk implementation. That is, until the U.S. election put climate change denialism back on the table.

  As political momentum slows, perhaps there is no better time to glance at the “rear-vision mirror of history,” as suggested by Anthony McMichael in Climate Change and the Health of Nations. The book’s goal is not to make predictions but to motivate change, which McMichael does by bringing into focus humanity’s sensitivity to fluctuations in the natural climate system throughout history.

  McMichael, an epidemiologist, published prolifically on the relationship between changing climates and human health during his four-decade-long career. This is the last full-length work he completed before his unexpected death in 2014. True to his legacy, McMichael puts people front and center in the story.

  The book weaves together historical threads, multiple fields of science, and references to art and literature, as if McMichael is gathering the strands of his knowledge. Its power derives from synthesis.

  LOOP IMAGES LTD/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO
  Just 6° separated the last glacial period from the era in which early farming began, notes McMichael.
  Our journey through Earth’s evolutionary phases begins in the Cambrian explosion 540 million years ago and continues through the Pleistocene to the beginning of our current epoch, the Holocene, aka our “climatic comfort zone.” Cue the spread of farming and, as more food begets more people, the rise of towns, cities, and civilizations. Along the way, the book describes climate-enabled developments in agriculture, environmental pressures that caused the rise and collapse of empires, and the increase in natural resources demanded by ever-more-prosperous and complex societies.

  We see how cooling temperatures forced early Europeans to abandon settlements and make do with less-productive farming and how unusually cool and humid conditions ushered in the bubonic plague and contributed to the fall of the Roman Empire. The Mayan civilization, we learn, met a similar fate, in part as a result of severe drought that brought food shortages, conflict, and migration. As we reach modern times, the information gets richer and more familiar: food and water shortages, extreme weather disasters, the first cholera pandemic, etc.

  Food shortages emerge as the greatest recurring risk. But McMichael is careful to note that climatic variation does not act alone in major crises. More often than not, it gives an “extra punch” to other forces, such as environmental degradation, social unrest, and displacement.

  Just 6°C separates the emergence of early farming 11,000 years ago from the end of the glacial period that preceded it, McMichael notes, giving context to the 3° to 4°C increase expected this century if current emission rates are maintained. And it’s not just ecological systems that are vulnerable to small variations in temperature: Human biology evolved in times of stability, slowly adapting to climatic variations through natural selection. The book calls on a framework for understanding the vulnerability of species and systems to climate change, categorizing the evidence according to exposure, susceptibility, and adaptive capacity.

  Here, McMichael is at his most critical. He sees naiveté in arguments that human ingenuity will get the world out of trouble and laments the pursuit of incremental technical fixes. An instance of optimism about the rise of renewable energy soon fades under the weight of an array of perceived structural and scientific barriers. Ultimately, the book traces our failure to adapt and respond to climate change to an economic paradigm that equates material growth with progress, overlooking the value of natural wealth.

  Scepticism, doubt, and denial don’t escape McMichael’s attention. He argues that not believing in climate change originates from a human tendency to favor urgent, survival-enhancing reactions over responding to gradual changes. Can the brainpower we evolved in times of climatic stability be channeled toward changing the behavior that undermines this stability? he asks.

  McMichael concedes that change is not easy. He focuses on motivating action by speaking to the public about climate change not in the abstract but in terms that are closer to home, akin to everyday experience. Through education and informed discussion, let’s talk of debilitating heat, not emissions; parched crops, not scenarios; infectious microbes in the water we drink, not targets. This way, he says, there may be a chance to activate a “fight or flight” response that befits this threat to our survival.

  About the author

  The reviewer is a freelance writer and editor based in London.

• Tyee
  https://thetyee.ca/Culture/2017/06/27/Climate-Change-Plagued-Nations/
  Word count: 1212

  Quoted in Sidelights: “stands as an instant classic,” “We should read it as carefully and attentively as we would listen to our oncologist describe the progress of our cancer and our chances of recovery.”
  “in the light of all the fallen empires McMichael describes in this book, those governments and corporations might reflect on their own life expectancies in the next pandemic or climate disaster.”
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  CULTURE
  How Climate Change Has Plagued the Health of Nations for Centuries
  It’s brought down countless empires, as Anthony McMichael’s brilliant history recounts.
  By Crawford Kilian 27 Jun 2017 | TheTyee.ca
  Crawford Kilian is a contributing editor of The Tyee.
  51 SHARES JOIN 117 Comments

  image atom
  Anthony McMichael, author of ‘Climate Change and the Health of Nations’, sees material growth as a hazard to our survival.
  Climate Change and the Health of Nations: Famines, Fevers, and the Fate of Populations
  Anthony J. McMichael with Alistair Woodward and Cameron Muir
  Oxford University Press (2017)
  Global-warming deniers have adopted a new tactic: “Of course the climate is changing,” they sigh, “because it has always changed. So what’s your point?”

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  Even without our assistance, climate change is actually a force that has shaped us for millions of years and killed millions in the process. It was bad enough until about 1800; climate used to change slowly over centuries, but now thanks to us it is changing in decades.

  Anthony McMichael was an Australian epidemiologist who completed a draft of this book before his untimely death in 2014. Two colleagues revised it, and it now stands as an instant classic. We should read it as carefully and attentively as we would listen to our oncologist describe the progress of our cancer and our chances of recovery.

  As McMichael shows in his enormously documented book, climate change drove us out of the trees and eventually out of Africa and across the planet. It also drove us out of a congenial and mobile hunter-gatherer ecological niche into the “Faustian bargain” of sedentary agriculture: We could support far more people, but at the cost of malnutrition, hierarchical societies, and recurrent epidemics of diseases acquired from our domestic animals.

  We can now see the price of that bargain: early farming societies could support a lot of people as long as they were shorter and sicker than hunter-gatherers. If their land couldn’t support them, early farmers died or moved — or simply overthrew their ruling priests and warriors and bureaucrats.

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  Two history lessons

  The past 10 thousand years should have taught us two things: When climate changes, people move, and when states can’t feed their people, they fall. As McMichael describes it, too little rain, or too much, leads to malnutrition and famine. Malnourished peoples succumb to new epidemics, or rise up against their rulers, or invade their neighbours.

  As the Sahara dried eight thousand years ago, farmers and pastoralists migrated to the Nile Valley and founded Egypt. Twelve hundred years before Christ, a prosperous Bronze Age Mediterranean civilization collapsed into wars and anarchy as climate refugees tried to find land and water.

  The “barbarians” didn’t invade Rome just for the hell of it. They were technologically about as advanced as the Romans, but climate change drove them across Rome’s frontiers against their will — often pursued by still more climate refugees.

  Rome, of course, tried to keep them out, or to recruit them into its legions. But climate change also enabled the “plague of Justinian” to kill millions of Romans in the first European incursion of bubonic plague. The empire just didn’t have the bureaucrats and farmers and soldiers left to stop unwanted immigrants.

  Volcanoes + fleas = pandemic

  Even when a major state like Rome seems to have established a strong society, climate can undo it all. The plague of Justinian, McMichael suggests, was thanks to a volcanic eruption in New Guinea that cooled the planet and enabled infected fleas to survive on the rats in grain shipments from Ethiopia to the Mediterranean. Similarly, climate enabled rats to stow away on caravans in central Asia, spreading bubonic plague to both Europe and China.

  image atom
  A BC Megadrought? We've Had Them Before
  READ MORE
  After this epic tour of human history, McMichael makes it easy to see how climate change continues to affect modern societies. He argues that we are less susceptible to climate change — but not immune. Even heat waves, as they grow longer and hotter, can kill thousands in days. Over 70,000 died in the 2003 European heat wave, and 55,000 in Russia in 2010.

  Moreover, we’re not as robust and resilient as our ancestors were: we eat ourselves into obesity, we suffer high blood pressure, we don’t exercise enough, and many of us live with chronic stress. Not only do these put us at risk in the next heat wave or pandemic, but our infrastructure can break down: electricity can fail, reservoirs and snowpacks can dry out, bridges and highways can wash out, and farmland is degraded.

  image atom
  Refugees: Ready or Not, Here They Come
  READ MORE
  McMichael argues, “Societies with coherent and stable structure, mutual trust, shared and well-applied knowledge, efficient information dissemination, good government, and community-level capacities are better placed to cope with climatic threats or crises.”

  Syria, clearly, is not such a society, and a prolonged drought drove many farmers into the cities where their discontent helped trigger the 2011 uprising and the current catastrophic civil war. The Middle East has plenty of other such societies. So does sub-Saharan Africa, whose peoples are in climate-driven upheaval from Ebola in Liberia to civil war in Somalia. And so do many nations in Latin America and the Caribbean.

  In all those regions, people are on the move — usually to the north, where Europe and North America offer some slim chance of survival. But our own “coherent and stable structure” sometimes seems dangerously fragile in the age of Donald Trump.

  Looking ahead, McMichael sees material growth as a hazard to our survival. Better, he says, to measure growth as “an increase in the actual value (including quality, utility, and durability) of goods and services” or even as a “steady-state economy.” Poised against such ideas are pretty much every government and corporation in the world, many of them actively opposed to the very idea of climate change.

  But in the light of all the fallen empires McMichael describes in this book, those governments and corporations might reflect on their own life expectancies in the next pandemic or climate disaster. [Tyee]

  Read more: Environment

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