How Our Health Depends on Nature: A Lecture by Dr. Eric Chivian
From: 30 December 2010
To: 30 December 2010
Most attention paid to the loss of biodiversity has focused on the expected ecological consequences, or on the aesthetic, ethical, sociologic, or economic dimensions of this loss for human beings. The implications for our health are rarely considered. This is a serious problem, for not only are the full human impacts of biodiversity loss failing to inform policy decision makers, but the public, lacking an understanding of the health risks involved, is not grasping the magnitude of the biodiversity crisis and not developing a sense of urgency about addressing it.
Dr. Eric Chivian’s talk will examine the relationship between human health and biodiversity, looking at some case studies of medicines and of medical research models derived from Nature, and discuss how ecosystem services sustain all life, including human life, on Earth.
Special attention will be paid to how biodiversity loss can affect the outbreak and spread of human infectious disease. Dr. Chivian and partners’ award-winning Oxford University Press book Sustaining Life: How Human Health Depends on Biodiversity, will be used to supply the case studies.