The Center for Sustainable Medicine

Recommended Reading

Philosophy of Sustainable and Ecological Medicine
The best books and links on Ecological and Sustainable Medicine

How can we be healthy if our living environment is toxic? And how can medicine be good for us if it is bad for the environment? For medicine to be truly sustainable it must be safe for our own bodies, non-toxic to the environment, and affordable for practitioners and patients alike.

As I was preparing an information table for the first annual Sunfest—a celebration of holistic medicine and sustainable living, I began drafting a manifesto that brought together the two concepts—sustainability and health care—based on the idea that our own health is intimately connected with the health of the planet, and handed it out to all the participants. After I wrote it, I did a Google search to see if anyone else was writing on the subject, and found a number of articles, and organizations such as Health Care Without Harm, and a book called Ecological Medicine, published by a group called the Bioneers. I was thrilled to find that I was in good company, and that their thinking was so perfectly aligned with my own. I went on from there to start The Center for Sustainable Medicine.

Other groups have used the terms “Green Medicine” “Slow Medicine” and “Ecologically Sustainable Medicine.” I like all of these terms, and they each have their own flavor. I have settled on the term Sustainable Medicine for now because it includes the sense of environmental sustainability, the sustaining of local medicinal practices, and the economic sustainability that is so notably absent in the United States’ current model of health care. (Yet in choosing this term I must give a nod to the Bioneer’s philosophy that the environment needs to be restored, and not just sustained—which I totally agree with.)

Below you will find links to books, articles and organizations working on the complex interrelationship between medicine and the environment.

— Didi Pershouse
   
   
 
To order books:
You can help support our work at the Center for Sustainable Medicine by ordering books through these links. (Amazon pays 6-8% of your total, directly to our Center.)To order, click on the book title on this page. This will take you to the book’s page at Amazon.com, or another supplier to whom we are linked.To order multiple books, please use the back arrow button at the top of your screen (otherwise, we will only get paid for the first book.)You can also save this page by clicking on “favorites” or “bookmarks” at the top of your screen so that you can easily get back to it at any time.

Books on Sustainable Medicine
To order, click on book titles Ecological Medicine: Healing the Earth, Healing Ourselves (The Bioneers Series)
Kenny Ausubel, EditorThis is an incredibly rich resource book, very readable, and very thorough—covering everything from toxins in breast-milk, to the question of how human rights relate to the web of life, to incontrovertible scientific research on the healing power of prayer (even on things growing in Petri dishes!). It is a compilation of well-written and often-brilliant essays by doctors, ecologists, law-breaking mothers, herbalists, and medicine women on the subject of Ecological Medicine, drawn from presentations given at the annual Bioneers Conference. Contributers include Dr. Tieraona Low Dog, Michael Lerner of Commonweal, herbalist Christopher Hobbs, Dr. Andrew Weil, Diana Ruiz of Project Underground, and Peg O’Mara of Mothering Magazine.

Articles on Sustainable Medicine:

“Sustainable Medicine Manifesto” by Didi Pershouse

“The Case for Ecological Medicine” by Ted Schettler, MD, MPH

“What’s Turning America’s Doctors Green?” by Randy Peyser

“Ecological Medicine, A Call for Inquiry and Action” a collective statement by the Science and Environmental Health Network.

LINKS to Organizations Related to Sustainable Medicine:

The Center for Sustainable Medicine: Providing programs, teachings, and publications to create dialogue between practitioners, thinkers, and visionaries in the fields of Medicine, Alternative Healing, and Environmental Studies http://www.sustainablemedicine.net

Health Care Without Harm: A global coalition of 443 organizations in 52 countries working to protect health by reducing pollution in the health care industry. http://www.noharm.org/

Bioneers: Hosts programs, and an annual conference of scientific and social innovators for restoring the earth—including publications on ecological medicine: http://www.bioneers.org/

Science and Environmental Health Network: Founded by a consortium of North American environmental organizations concerned about the misuse of science in ways that failed to protect the environment and human health.
http://www.sehn.org/

Environmental Health News: links to articles in the world press about environmental health, with daily updates. http://www.environmentalhealthnews.org/

The Luminary Project: Stories about nurses creatively and strategically addressing environmental problems and illuminating the way towards safe hospitals, communities with clean air, land and water; and children born without toxic chemicals in their bodies. http://www.theluminaryproject.org/

Physicians for Social Responsibility: 26,000 medical and health professionals working to reverse global warming and toxic degradation of the environment, and to stop nuclear proliferation. http://www.psr.org/

Center for Health, Environment and Justice: Effective grass-roots community organizing so that people can have a say in the environmental policies and decisions that affect their health and well-being. This is one place to go if you suspect your health is being compromised by a local environmental problem. http://www.chej.org

Envirolink: a grassroots online community that unites hundreds of organizations and volunteers around the world with millions of people in more than 150 countries. Provides up-to-date environmental information and news. http://www.envirolink.org

Teleosis Institute: provides trainings to health professionals to serve as environmental educators, advocates and stewards. http://www.teleosis.org/

Commonweal: health and environmental research institute http://www.commonweal.org/