HUMAN HEALTH depends on nature’s wealth, but biological diversity is diminishing at rates not seen for 65 million years.
That’s according to Dr Aaron Bernstein from Harvard Medical School’s Center for Health and the Global Environment, who will talk in Dublin this evening.
"For most people our lifestyles make nature invisible to us," Dr Bernstein told The Irish Times. "But when ecosystems are mucked around, the effects to our health become apparent."
Some of the most obvious health links with nature include food and medications, he noted.
“If you look at the newly approved drugs by the US Food and Drug Administration between 1981 and 2006, and ask what percentage would not exist if it were not for nature designing the compound that’s in the drug or at least giving the blueprint of it, two-thirds of those licensed drugs – more than 1,000 drugs – are from natural sources in one form or another.”
Nature also provides less obvious “ecological services” to support human health, such as providing water, Dr Bernstein added.
“Most people on earth rely upon an ecosystem to provide them with water, and this service is only as available as the land and ecosystem extent provides.”
However, species are being lost and ecosystems are changing fundamentally, he said.
“The rate at which species are going extinct today is about 100 times higher than we see in the fossil record, and the two main drivers are habitat loss – mainly deforestation and conversion of land to agriculture – and climate change.”
And once a gene, species or ecosystem vanishes, it is gone forever, Dr Bernstein said. “You can’t buy it back into existence. It’s quite clear that species extinctions are going on at a fairly alarming rate and that ecosystems are changing in profound ways, and to act as though these changes to the biota of the planet were inconsequential is foolish.”
Dr Bernstein, who is a medical doctor at the Children’s Hospital Boston, wants to highlight the “concrete” links between nature and human health so people better understand the implications of biodiversity loss.
“As a physician every day I try to convince people to change their behaviours, which is a tall order, but it is impossible unless they understand what is at stake for themselves,” he said.
“My goal is to help people understand what biological diversity is and make connections so people understand these vital services and goods that nature provides us.”
Dr Aaron Bernstein will give a public talk at the Royal College of Surgeons at 6pm today at 123 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2. To register see rcsi.ie/aol2010 or call 01-4022373
