Human Carrying Capacity and Human Health
Colin D. Butler
Citation: Butler CD (2004) Human carrying capacity and human health. PLoS Med 1(3): e55.

Copyright: © 2004 Colin D. Butler. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Colin D. Butler is a research fellow at the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health at the Australian National University, Canberra, Australia.

Greenhouse Emissions and Health
All doctors now accept that climate change will have serious consequences for human heath. The Committees of DEA spend a considerable proportion of their time educating the profession and governments on this issue. It is depressing for all of us to realise that greenhouse emissions continue to rise. Furthermore if we look at the data from those countries making a major effort to reduce emissions and having a greater contribution from alternative energy, their emissions are nevertheless increasing. Emissions in the European Union are increasing by about 1.4 % per annum. Emissions are also increasing in the UK.

WASHINGTON, DC, July 14, 2005 (ENS) - Exposure to hundreds of toxic chemicals begins in the womb, finds a new study of the umbilical cord blood of 10 American newborns commissioned by the Environmental Working Group. The research and advocacy organization asked a lab to test 10 American Red Cross cord blood samples for what the group claims is the most extensive array of industrial chemicals, pesticides and other pollutants ever studied.

The group wanted to measure how early the human body burden of chemicals begins to accumulate. The lab tests found that hundreds of industrial chemicals, pollutants and pesticides are pumped back and forth from mother to fetus through umbilical cord blood.

How does Doctors for the Environment operate?

This question is frequently asked by members and by others. Some may have the impression that we are trying to be yet another environmental NGO that operates by press releases, lobbying and the media. This is not so. It is our role to describe, using scientific and medical data, the impact on human health of environmental degradation and pollution. We explain these impacts to our colleagues and students, to the public, to industry and commerce and to our elected representatives and to government. This must not be confused with “lobbying”. We are not “lobbying” our students or any of these groups. Rather we provide briefings based on our scientific and medical expertise. The definition of lobbying (New Oxford Dictionary of English) is “a group of people seeking to influence politicians or public officials on a particular issue” Yes we are a group of people and we are briefing politicians on health issues. But so do the Cancer Council, the nutritionalists, geriatricians and other groups with specialist expertise. All provide important information that politicians can use in making their decisions The definition of lobbying implies influence on voting...This is not our role. Doctors for the Environment is non party political. Our membership includes members of the Liberal, Labor, Democrat and Green Parties. We have no difficulty in working together to prepare policy for the agenda is environmental health, not a political one!

By J Neil Burry.
Monotheistic religions have determined the ethics that control human behaviour so far and continue to do so even in secular societies.Augustinian original sin, which in the book is replaced by Darwinian original sin, has been a particularly successful ethical force. The onslaught on the environment which civilisation, driven by humans with clear consciences, has been accompanied by the “success” of six billion people on earth.

The book is an attempt to kick-start a debate on whether evolutionary theory can be the basis of a similarly successful Darwinian code of ethics centred on Darwinian original sin and the medical ethic of primarily doing no harm. It is an attempt to kick-start a debate on the sort of ethics necessary for a sustainable future.

By Colin Butler

The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) was called for by United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan in 2000. Conceived in the late 1990s, following the disappointing response to its predecessor,(1) the MA formally started in 2001. Its objective was to assess the consequences of past, present and future ecosystem change for human well-being and the scientific basis for actions to enhance the sustainable use of ecosystems, in order to enhance human well-being.

The MA has now almost completed this Herculean task. Its birth was announced simultaneously in 12 cities on March 30 and March 31, 2005. As one of two “co-ordinating lead authors” for the chapter “Human Well-Being across the scenarios”(2) I participated in one of these launches, in New Delhi, India.