In the US human health has traditionally been regarded as isolated from its ecological context. During my medical training and subsequent career in emergency medicine, issues such as climate change, habitat destruction, species extinction, pollution and depletion of freshwater supplies were treated as key environmental problems are outside the domain of the medical industry. Equity was seen as a fundamentally political issue, economic and social. Sustainability is rarely seen.
I think that this view needs to be changed, not just doctors, but to all Americans, have the responsibility to make this change. Achieve health requires that we address all these elements in an integrated and ecological approach. Our goal should be "healthy people, living in equitable and sustainable societies, in balance with the natural world." Unaware of these elements has profound and unacceptable consequences.
Few have foreseen these consequences better than my professor of biology at Stanford University, Dr. Paul Ehrlich, considered by many as the father of the ecology of America. Crafoord Prize winner, the equivalent of the Nobel Prize for his pioneering work in the field of ecology, Dr. Ehrlich gave a remarkable speech which was, indeed, an urgent call for an ecological approach to health. I encourage you to click here to listen to this speech in 1970. I think you'll be surprised at how contemporary and compelling it is today, almost forty years later.
I would say, however, that one of the best examples of the application of some of the elements of a speech ecological approach to health highly anticipated by Dr. Ehrlich decades. As dependent on the US military, I went to Japan in 1946 with my family to spend three years as my father was involved in the effort led by General Douglas MacArthur to implement the Marshall Plan in Japan after World War II . Although most Americans have understood the Marshall Plan as a financial assistance program, which is less known systems that its approach was based, wide and consists of three distinct components: democratization, decentralization and demilitarization. To implement the "three D" MacArthur took drastic measures that affect all aspects of Japanese society. For example, its approach to decentralization reflects an understanding that the concentration of wealth and power in industrial monopolies family giants, Zaibatsu, had played a crucial role in the genesis of Japanese fascism. These controlled by the Japanese economy and had, among other things, to eliminate union monopolies. MacArthur dissolves these monopolies and went to the extreme concentration of wealth by imposing a minimum wage and a maximum wage and redistribution of the wealth of the Zaibatsu. He also led universal access to health care. The end result of these measures was the transformation of Japan from a nation with one of the largest gaps between rich and poor and the worst health indicators (life expectancy, infant mortality, etc.) in the world, in Japan today. Japan today is the country with the best health indices and the smallest gap between rich and poor in the industrialized world.
Given the current challenges we face as Americans, think about what happened in the US during the same period. While our nation was fifth in the world in 1950 in terms of health indices, and had a small gap between the rich and the poor and middle class increasingly, these trends have already been invested. Today, our health comparative indices are no better than 21, below all other developed countries, Costa Rica and Cuba. The gap between rich and poor in our country is now the largest of any industrialized country. During the same period our spending on health care has skyrocketed. The United States now spends more than half of all the money spent on health care in the world, the highest per capita of any nation, while representing only 4% of the world population. In contrast, Japan spends the lowest amount per capita on health care among industrialized countries in the world while achieving the best health indices.
Quite another company that employs the important aspects of an ecological approach to health is a nation of Bhutan, located in the mountains of the Himalayas near Nepal. Although Bhutan supports very few visitors in an effort to preserve their cultural traditions, have been granted over the last two winters and Mary Phil DeReimer authorization Adventure Kayak paddlers directing groups to explore the rivers of Bhutan. I encourage you to visit his website at http://www.adventurekayaking.com for details of their trips.
The importance of the experience from the perspective of an ecological approach to health is that the people of Bhutan, who are materially poor by American standards, are relatively healthy physically and spiritually. To paraphrase Mary and Phil, "the definition of happiness in Bhutan is not" have and get "instead of their growing wealth has little to do with happiness. On the contrary, believe that the desire and will often cause suffering . This principle is an underlying factor motivating behavior so that their culture is open, affectionate, curious and accepting. His government pursues "Gross National Happiness" and promote the Government of happiness is dedicated to the implementation of social and environmental model educational program that takes into account the desire to protect the country's environment and cultural traditions. "
The distant kingdom of Bhutan and the concept of "gross national happiness" may seem esoteric to many Americans. However, more than 400 US economists, including Nobel Prize respected Professor Herbert Simon argue that in reality would be more realistic and useful to replace the use of GDP (the total of all goods and services produced) measure of Genuine Progress Index, which attempts to measure the quality of our lives. Comparison of these measures in the period since the 1970s is instructive. While conventional GDProduct more than doubled, the Genuine Progress Index decreased by 45% during this period. Measurement of the GPI would have warned us that, unlike many assurances to the contrary, the US economy has been undermining our health during this period. Not only our prosperity and unevenly distributed unsustainably which has not made its most important function. This function is to support the improvement of the health of our population.
Obviously, an ecological approach to scientific health claims we define what health is the best way to measure and promote conditions that achieve the same. If we do these things, it is obvious that you will not succeed in achieving health. We must recognize that health is more than the absence of disease. On the contrary, we must do things that actively promote. It is not enough to try to correct the effects of doing things that destroy.
A Mother Lode is our ongoing commitment to contribute to this effort, based on a river, a letter, a social act and environmentally experience simultaneously. We hope to bring your ideas and suggestions, and help explore the possibilities. Remember, the fun is just that: "re-creation", a process by which a meaningful and constructive change an essential part of an integrated and ecological approach to health occurs.