By Alleen Brown, Photo: Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis/Getty Images, The Intercept, February 12, 2022
DURING THE YEAR Justin Phillips spent in an unair-conditioned segregation cell at the Coffield Unit, a state prison near Palestine, Texas, the soaring temperatures took a toll. All but eight days of June 2018 saw the heat index rise above 110 degrees. The blood pressure medicine Phillips takes to treat a rare kidney condition made him ill in high heat, so he would skip doses. At times, he said, guards failed to escort him to take his other medications.
“Someone diagnosed with pauci-immune glomerulonephritis” — Phillips’s diagnosis — “could get in trouble in a hurry if they’re exposed to heat, regardless of medications,” said Aaron Bernstein, an expert on climate and health at Harvard University’s School of Public Health.
With treatment, patients with the condition are expected to have a 75 percent five-year survival rate. By the time he left prison last year, Phillips had end-stage renal failure, and doctors told him the likelihood of surviving five years was 40 percent.
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