Board Positions

Oregon Physicians for Social Responsibility

Board Position Statement- adopted 2009

Oregon PSR board and staff consistently strive to enhance our stature, strength, and credibility as a voice for our members and as a resource for other organizations and the community.  Our organization often receives requests (e.g., groups, media representatives, individuals) for information, support, and/or endorsement on issues that are not the direct focus of our program areas, but which do fall within the scope of our broader mission - Guided by the values and expertise of medicine and public health, Physicians for Social Responsibility works to protect human life from the gravest threats to health and survival. PSR is the medical and public health voice working to prevent the use or spread of nuclear weapons and to slow, stop and reverse global warming and toxic degradation of the environment.

While the board and staff of Oregon PSR have expertise in a number of areas, our time and resources must necessarily be focused: peace and security, global warming, environmental health, and food safety.  To meet the needs of our members for evidence-based resources consistent with our broader mission, Oregon PSR may adopt formal positions on various subjects when it deems it appropriate. To read more, click here.

Positions approved:

2009 Oregon PSR Supports Health Care Reform

Oregon Physicians for Social Responsibility asserts that promoting health for all is a vital social responsibility. Attention must be paid to social determinants of individual and public health, as well as to the system providing medical care.

Oregon PSR asserts that a sound system of health care for the United States would:

o       Ensure for all US residents the right of timely access to effective medical care for an essential set of health conditions.

o       Protect the relationship between patients and providers

o       Strengthen public health services including measures to address the social and environmental determinants of health

o       Ensure that market competition be based on cost, quality and outcomes, not the avoidance of risk

o       Provide a means for the public to set health priorities for the nation or region

o       Be financed in an equitable manner that is sustainable over time

To read more, click here. For board questions on this subject, please contact John Pearson, MD.

For grassroots involvement in Oregon, go to www.archimedesmovement.org (www.wecandobetter.org)

2009 Oregon PSR against Oregon Death Penalty

The Oregon Chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility expresses deep concern that Oregon law continues to include the death penalty as a possible consequence for certain criminal offences. The death penalty is a direct threat to human life, and has consistently been shown to be ineffective and unjust.

As health care providers and other concerned citizens, we adhere to the philosophy of “heal and do no harm”.  Therefore, as an organization, we voice our opposition to the death penalty everywhere, and urge the citizens of Oregon to invalidate Oregon law permitting this penalty in our state at the earliest possible time.  To read more, click here. For board questions on this subject, please contact Marylou Noble, LPC. For local work on this issue, go to www.oadp.org  Oregonians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty

2009 Oregon PSR Supports variance on Long Term 2 (LT2) Enhanced Surface Water Treatment Rule

Oregon Physicians for Social Responsibility strongly supports the city in pursuing a variance through the EPA with the help our legislative offices especially Senator Merkley.  We also understand the need to move ahead with compliance but are concerned about the huge cost when there are so many other budget demands. To read more, click here for details here on a statement ratified by Oregon PSR's board regarding this rule. For board questions on this subject, please contact Catherine Thomasson, MD.

For local work on this issue, go to http://www.oregonwild.org/waters/bull_run

Coming soon- Oregon PSR Peace Position Statement on military conflict

2007 Oregon PSR supports NO INCENTIVES FOR INCINERATORS

Policies that qualify incinerators—including mass-burn, gasification, pyrolysis, plasma, refuse derived fuel and other incinerator technologies—for renewable energy credits, tax credits, subsidies and other incentives present a renewed threat to environmental and economic justice in U.S. communities. http://www.zerowarming.org/article.php?id=248. For board questions on this subject, please contact Joe Miller, PhD.

2003 PSR resolution to withdraw from Iraq

Recognizing that the U.S.-led military conflict in Iraq since March 2002 has resulted in the likely death of over 100,000 Iraqi civilians (1), with untold (and deliberately uncounted) numbers of Iraqi civilian casualties, and with well-documented human rights violations against Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib and other U.S.-controlled facilities; read entire resolution here. 

1996 PSR resolution against dioxin pollution and medical waste incineration.