A CHARITY director has questioned whether prosecuting medical professionals is in the public interest as six medics face trial for raising awareness of climate change’s impact on public health.

The medics, who in 2022 cracked panes of glass at JP Morgan’s offices in Canary Wharf, London, could lose their professional status and even face imprisonment.

They plastered posters on the office reading: “In case of medical climate emergency break glass,” during a record-breaking heatwave.

Despite acknowledging in a leaked report that climate change was a threat to the human race, JP Morgan has poured £339 billion into the fossil fuel sector since the 2015 Paris Agreement.

Psychiatrist Dr Juliette Brown, dementia nurse Maggie Fay, GPs Dr David McKelvey, Dr Patrick Hart, consultant Dr Alice Clack and mental health specialist Ali Rowe are on trial this week for criminal damage at Snaresbrook Crown Court.

The medics have been denied all legal defences by the judge, echoing clampdowns on other climate protesters. 

Plan B Earth director Tim Crosland, who attended the trial, said that despite this, Judge Gerard Pounder warned that the trial could enter a third week. 

Highlighting massive delays in the criminal justice system for trials for sexual and violence-related offences, Mr Crosland said: “Two weeks’ trial for people taking protest action [over] the threat of something that is very real — is this in the public interest, trying to prosecute medical professionals?”

He drew parallels with protests against the tobacco industry in Australia in the ’80s, in which doctors were prosecuted for defacing billboards.

The actions were recognised as a catalyst for the country’s ban on tobacco advertising in 1992.