A little under two weeks ago, King Charles took a private jet to fly to to Dubai to speak at the opening ceremony for the U.N.’s COP28 climate jamboree. Whether it was appropriate for him to do so, given that Britain’s monarch is meant to keep clear of anything too “political,” is an interesting question. Spoiler: Probably not. But that won’t have bothered Charles, a profoundly self-important individual who almost certainly believes that such petty considerations are beneath him.
As so often with Charles, the speech showed clear traces of the curious “spirituality” with which he has long been associated. Its conclusion read as follows:
We need to remember that the indigenous world view teaches us that we are all connected. Not only as human beings, but with all living things and all that sustains life. As part of this grand and sacred system, harmony with Nature must be maintained. The Earth does not belong to us, we belong to the Earth.
Leaving aside the fact that the last sentence was an unfortunate choice of words from someone whose family, as Spiked’s Brendan O’Neill pointed out, “owns tracts of land worth £1 billion,” Charles’s superstitious ramblings must have been a little embarrassing for those at COP28 who like to stress the importance of #science.
And speaking of Charles and #science, here are some extracts from a story in today’s London Times about Dr. Michael Dixon, who has been appointed by the king as head of the royal medical household:
The last three heads of the medical household were Sir Huw Thomas, professor of gastrointestinal genetics at Imperial College London; Sir John Cunningham, a professor of nephrology at University College London; and Sir Richard Thompson, former president of the Royal College of Physicians.
Dixon is a less orthodox choice than his predecessors. While he practised medicine in the NHS for almost half a century, he is also one of the nation’s most outspoken advocates of alternative medicine, including homeopathy . . .
Charles wrote the foreword to Dixon’s book, praising him as a “remarkable physician”. He cut the ribbon on his surgery and gave him a royal honour: the lieutenant of the Royal Victorian Order. Last year, he allowed the doctor to bring a group of homeopaths into the Palace for a meeting. It included Tony Pinkus, a pharmacist who had been censured by the medicines regulator for offering fake cures for child meningitis . . .
Charles’s public advocacy of alternative medicine began in 1982 in his inaugural address as president of the British Medical Association. The Prince of Wales, aged 34 at the time, told an audience in London: “I have often thought that one of the less attractive traits of various professional bodies and institutions is the deeply ingrained suspicion and outright hostility which can exist towards anything unorthodox or unconventional”.
He said that modern medicine was, “like the celebrated Tower of Pisa, slightly off balance”. It was time, he said, for a return to ancient methods of healing and a renewed emphasis on treating patients as a whole. The speech met hostility from the medical establishment and a stream of supportive letters from healers and homeopathy advocates. The BMA begrudgingly launched an inquiry which in 1986 found no scientific evidence that homeopathy worked.
Charles was undeterred.