The Coming Age of Ecological Medicine
(Page 5 of 5)
May/June 2001
By Kenny Ausubel, Utne Reader
As people and their governments face ever more complex scientific decisions, the precautionary principle can serve as what some have called an "insurance policy against our own ignorance." After all, we can’t even predict next week’s weather or the economy a year out, much less the unfathomable complexity of living systems.
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The Hippocratic oath tells doctors to "First, do no harm," yet our medical practices often pose serious environmental threats. In 1994, for instance, the EPA reported that medical waste incinerators were the biggest source of dioxin air pollution in the United States. Dioxin finds its way into our food and accumulates in our fat; it’s been linked to neurological damage in fetuses. Even a simple thermometer contains mercury, another potentially deadly neurotoxin.The medical-waste problem does not stop there. Along with generating radioactive waste from various treatments, the medical industry is now the source of a new peril: pharmaceutical pollution. Creatures living in lakes and rivers appear to be at special risk as antibiotics, estrogen, birth-control pills, painkillers, and other drugs find their way into the waste stream. Fish are already affected; intersex mutations (showing both male and female characteristics) have been reported in various species around the world. But humans are not immune. The war on drugs may soon take on a new meaning as entire populations are subjected to constant low doses of pharmaceuticals in the water supply.Groups like Health Care Without Harm (www.noharm.org) have made it their mission to halt or curb such damaging medical practices, especially the use of mercury thermometers and the industry’s reliance on burning its waste.| Buy the magazine!Subscribe |
With 300 member organizations in 27 countries, the coalition has had a major impact, in part by directly confronting the companies that make such products. Another group, the Greater Boston Physicians for Social Responsibility, has published a report with the Clean Water Fund called In Harm’s Way that documents the many toxic threats to child development (www.igc.org/psr/).
Ecological medicine suggests first doing no harm to the environment, then going further, creating a medical practice that itself minimizes harm.
Like virtually all earlier healing traditions, it emphasizes prevention, strengthening the organism and the environment to avoid illness in the first place. Ancient Chinese healers, for instance, expected compensation only if their clients remained well, not when they got sick.
But an ecological approach to healing also looks to deeper tenets embedded in nature and how it operates. Again, the new vision reveals itself to be in many ways an old one. It borrows from the insights of indigenous healing traditions, many of which are now being confirmed by modern science—including the fact that nature has an extraordinary and mysterious capacity for self-repair.However resilient the biosphere may be, it’s crucial to understand that the planet’s basic life support systems are in serious decline. From climate change to plummeting biodiversity to gargantuan quantities of toxic wastes, the ecological stresses are reaching dangerous thresholds. Much of the damage can be traced to the 20th century’s three most destructive technologies: petrochemicals, nu-clear energy, and genetic engineering.• Apart from helping to induce potentially cataclysmic climate change, the petrochemical industry has un-leashed 80,000 or so synthetic compounds that now permeate our land, water, and air as well as our bodies. While some may be benign, the truth is that most have never been adequately tested—and even fewer have been measured for their cumulative effects or how they interact with other chemicals.• Nuclear energy has concentrated and spread radioactivity and virtually indestructible toxic waste products into living systems worldwide. While public dread may focus on cataclysmic accidents like the Chernobyl meltdown in 1986, other ill effects may come from steady exposure to low levels of radiation.• Genetic engineering is introducing yet another threat: biological pollution that literally has a life of its own, a gene genie that cannot be put back in the bottle.In addition to instructing healers first to do no harm, Hippocrates also instructed them in a lesser-known passage to "revere the healing force of nature." For years, that’s been my quest: working with nature to heal nature. I founded the Bioneers Conference in 1990 to bring together people exploring ways of doing this—biological pioneers from many cultures and disciplines, and from all walks of life. All had peered deep into the heart of the earth’s own living systems to understand what we can learn from 3.8 billion years of evolution. Their common purpose was to heal the earth. Their basic question: How would nature do it? They were all using their knowledge of living systems to devise solutions to our most pressing environmental and societal problems. (See "O Bioneers," Utne Reader, Jan./Feb. 2001, p. 28.) I now realize these people are modern healers, too.As their work repeatedly illustrates, we already have many of the technologies we need to retool our industrial system. Many of the bioneers show how we can replace existing industrial practices with sustainable alternatives that run on clean, renewable energy sources. Government has a role to play in this process too. Several years ago Sweden imposed a steep tax on pesticides, a measure that greatly reduced their use. Europe recently banned four antibiotics from animal feed. On the other side of the equation, governments are using tax subsidies to promote sustainable technologies such as chlorine-free paper production and organic farming. The city of Munich pays German farmers to grow organically in the watershed that supplies drinking water.The ecological medicine movement, one focus of the Bioneers conference to be held this fall (see resource box p. 64), aims to do something similar for the health care industry. Medical errors, for instance, now constitute a leading cause of death in the United States. Influenced by the success of safe, effective, popular alternatives, mainstream medicine could become safer itself.The ethic of preventing harm as seen in both environmental protection and ecological medicine will continue to spread, but what about existing messes? Many treatment methods modeled on living systems have shown dramatic capacities for bioremediation—that is, for detoxifying land, air, and water. Visionary biologist John Todd’s "living machines" mimic natural ecologies by utilizing bacteria, fungi, plants, fish, and mammals to purify water and industrial "wastes." The work of mycologist Paul Stamets has shown that fungi can help digest diesel spills and even chemical and biological weapons components.Similar success stories are found across many fields.
By looking to the principles of ecological healing to restore the earth and ourselves, we create not only the conditions for individual health, but also the basis for healthy societies and robust economies.
Biology is not rocket science. Rather, it is the superb art of relationships in the fantastically complex web of life.| Buy the magazine!Subscribe |
By mimicking nature, these approaches foster the healing that is the essence of living systems. Consider again the relationship between a nursing mother and her child. Despite the toxins that are now found in mother’s milk, it is still the best food for babies. Children fed breast milk are healthier because the mother also confers immunity and unmatched nutrition. Which brings us back to the essence of ecological healing: In the wisdom of nature also lies the solution.
Alternative medicine is arguably the single largest progressive social movement of our era. As it goes ever more mainstream, those working to advance public health are increasingly linking with those working to restore the earth’s ecological health. Growing public awareness of the direct links between our personal health and environmental health is stirring as a potent force in global politics. As suggested by Michael Lerner, founder of the Commonweal Institute, environmental health could well emerge as the central human rights issue of our age. We all have the right to be born free—from poisons.As human beings, we have a remarkable ability to reinvent our societies very rapidly. The task now is to create an earth-honoring culture founded in the sanctity of life and the sacred human-nature relationship. Along with many others, I herald for this new century a Declaration of Interdependence, flowing from the simple recognition that all life is connected. At its heart is ecological medicine, teaching us that we are the land and water and air. By restoring the earth, we restore ourselves.Kenny Ausubel is the author of When Healing Becomes a Crime: The Amazing Story of the Hoxsey Cancer Clinics and the Return of Alternative Therapies (Healing Arts Press, 2000), and the producer/director of the film Hoxsey: How Healing Becomes a Crime (Realidad Productions, 1987). He is the found-er of the Bioneers Conference, which this year will focus on ecological medicine (see resource box on p. 64). He is also the author of Restoring the Earth: Visionary Solutions from the Bioneers (HJ Kramer, 1997) set for republication in fall 2001 as The Bioneers: A Declaration of Interdependence.
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