[The Patient Earth--physicians' responsibility?]

During this century the discipline of community medicine has been confronted with three major threats to public health: former infectious diseases, contemporary life-style diseases, and impending environmental diseases. A new approach to community medicine, with an ecological profile and a focus on the interplay between politics, economics, biology, the environment and public health, may become the medical profession's most important instrument for contending with environmental diseases. By shedding light on destroyed ecosystems and health injuries, community medicine may contribute to the evolution of informed and effective opinion, and by keeping administrators and politicians informed of research findings and their consequences, promote ecologically compatible decision-making.