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Sustaining Life: How Human Health Depends on Biodiversity

The Earth's biodiversity—the rich variety of life on our planet—is disappearing at an alarming rate. And while many books have focused on the expected ecological consequences, or on the aesthetic, ethical, sociological, or economic dimensions of this loss, Sustaining Life: How Human Health Depends on Biodiversity, to be published in May, 2008 by Oxford University Press, is the first to examine the full range of potential threats that a loss of biodiversity poses to human health.

Edited and written by Harvard Medical School physicians Eric Chivian and Aaron Bernstein, with contributions by over 100 leading scientists, Sustaining Life presents a comprehensive—and sobering—view of how human medicines, biomedical research, the emergence and spread of infectious diseases, and the production of food, both on land and in the oceans, depend on biodiversity. The book's ten chapters cover everything from what biodiversity is and how human activity threatens it to how we as individuals can help conserve the world's richly varied biota. Seven groups of organisms, some of the most endangered on Earth—sharks, bears, primates, amphibians, cone snails, gymnosperms, and horseshoe crabs—provide detailed case studies to illustrate the contributions they have already made to human medicine, and those they are expected to make if we do not drive them to extinction. Drawing on the latest research, but written in language a general reader can easily understand, Sustaining Life argues that we can no longer see ourselves as separate from the natural world, nor assume that we will be unharmed by its alteration. Our health, as the authors so vividly detail, depends on the health of other species and on the integrity and vitality of natural ecosystems.

With a foreword by E.O. Wilson and a prologue by Kofi Annan, and more then 200 poignant color illustrations, Sustaining Life contributes essential perspective to the debate over how humans affect biodiversity and a compelling demonstration of the human health costs.

Sustaining Life: How Human Health Depends on Biodiversity is a project of the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School, under the auspices of the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP), the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP), the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), and the World Conservation Union (IUCN).

Advanced Praise for Sustaining Life | Book Chapters | Speaking Engagements | Purchase

Book Overview:

Sustaining Life Flyer | Book Jacket | Title Page | Dedication | Foreword | Preface | Table of Contents | Author Bios

Quotes from the Bible, Koran, Bhagavad Gita, and the Buddha about Life on Earth

Sample Front Plate (Chapter 1): Beetle Species | Sample Photo: Anopheles mosquito

The chapters in the book and their authors are as follows:

1. What is Biodiversity?—Professor Stuart L. Pimm (Duke University), Professor Maria Alice dos Santos Alves (University of Rio de Janeiro), Eric Chivian M.D., and Aaron Bernstein M.D.
2. How is Biodiversity Threatened by Human Activity?—Eric Chivian and Aaron Bernstein
3. Ecosystem Services—Jerry Melillo Ph.D. (Ecosystem Center, Wood’s Hole) and Professor Osvaldo Sala (Brown University)
4. Medicines from Nature—David Newman Ph.D. (Natural Products Branch, National Cancer Institute), John Kilama Ph.D. (Global Bioscience Development Institute), Aaron Bernstein, and Eric Chivian
5. Biodiversity and Biomedical Research—Eric Chivian, Aaron Bernstein, and Joshua P. Rosenthal Ph.D. (Fogarty International Center, National Institutes of Health)
6. Threatened Groups of Organisms Valuable to Medicine—Eric Chivian and Aaron Bernstein
7. Ecosystem Disturbance, Biodiversity Loss, and Human Infectious Diseases—Professor David H. Molyneux (Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine), Richard S. Ostfeld Ph.D. (Institute of Ecosystem Studies), Aaron Bernstein, and Eric Chivian
8. Biodiversity and Food Production—Professor Emeritus Daniel Hillel (University of Massachusetts) and Professor Cynthia Rosenzweig (Columbia University)
9. Genetically Modified Foods and Organic Farming—Eric Chivian and Aaron Bernstein
10. What Each of Us Can Do to Help Conserve Biodiversity—Jeffrey A. McNeely (World Conservation Union), Eleanor Sterling Ph.D. (Center for Biodiversity and Conservation, American Museum of Natural History) and Kalemani Jo Mulongoy Ph.D. (U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity)
    
    
    Appendix—Agencies, Organizations, Treaties, Conventions, and NGOs Working to Conserve Biodiversity

Praise for Sustaining Life:

“Sustaining Life is the most complete and powerful argument I have seen for the importance of preserving biodiversity.”

-Al Gore, former Vice President, Co-recipient of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize

“It was an exhilarating moment when scientists broke the genome code and showed us the basic building blocks of the human being. Now scientists are showing us how biodiversity works and why it is crucial to saving our planet for our children’s children and beyond. This important and compelling book is a blueprint for acting wisely and urgently.”

-Bill Moyers, former White House Press SEcretary, Host of PBS's Bill Moyers Journal

“There is probably no better way to convince anyone still uncertain about the urgent need to preserve biodiversity, which is rapidly diminishing as a result of human activities, than to document its importance to human health and medicine. The authors have done this with great thoroughness and from every possible angle, producing a volume that pairs authority with anecdote and scholarship with passion.”

-Harold Varmus, President, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Co-recipient of the 1989 Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology, former Director of the National Institutes of Health

“As a public health physician, I have been deeply involved for decades in helping political leaders, policy-makers, and the general public understand the relationship between human beings and the environment. Sustaining Life is the best and most comprehensive resource available demonstrating how human health depends on the health of the natural world.”

-Gro Brundtland, former Director General of the World Health Organization, former Prime Minister of Norway

"One of the main reasons the world faces a global environmental crisis is the belief that we human beings are somehow separate from the natural world in which we live and that we can therefore alter its physical, chemical, and biological systems without these alterations having any effect on humanity. Sustaining Life challenges this widely held misconception by demonstrating, definitively, with the best and most current scientific information available, that human health depends, to a larger extent than we might imagine, on the health of other species and on the healthy functioning of natural ecosystems."

- Kofi Annan, former Secretary-General of the United Nations, Co-recipient of the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize, from the Prologue

Pre-order Sustaining Life: How Human Health Depends on Biodiversity directly from Oxford University Press or on Amazon.com, Barnes&Noble, or Powell's Books.

Sustaining Life Events

Upcoming Events

April 23, 2008 A launch of Sustaining Life will be held at the United Nations Headquarters. The program will include comments by Eric Chivian, lead author and editor; Jeffrey Sachs, Director of the Earth Institute Columbia University, Special Advisor to UN Secretary-General Ban-Ki Moon; and representatives from the book's co-sponsoring organizations including the UNDP, UNEP, Secretariat of the CBD and IUCN.

May 1, 2008Aaron Bernstein will speak at Grand Rounds at Boston Medical Center.

May 7, 2008 A launch of Sustaining Life will be held at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History. The program will include comments by Cristián Samper, Acting Secretary, Smithsonian Institution; Eric Chivian, lead author and editor; and Edward O. Wilson, Pellegrino University Professor, Emeritus, Harvard University. A book signing will follow the program.

May 12, 2008 Aaron Bernstein will speak to the Department of Pediatrics at The University of Chicago as well as The Pritzker School of Medicine.

May 14, 2008 Aaron Bernstein will give two talks at the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine.

May 14 and 15, 2008 Aaron Bernstein will speak to the Program in Human Biology at Stanford University.

May 16, 2008 Sustaining Life lead author and editor Aaron Bernstein will speak at Grand Rounds at the Lucile Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford.

May 21, 2008 Eric Chivian will speak at a side event of the Ninth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP 9) in Bonn, Germany.

May 30, 2008Eric Chivian will speak at Oxford University, Oxford, England.

June 2, 2008Eric Chivian will speak at the University of Cambridge, Cambridge, England.

June 4, 2008Eric Chivian will speak at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

September 18, 2008 Eric Chivian will speak at the Harvard Museum of Natural History.

October 8, 2008 Sustaining Life lead author and editor Eric Chivian will speak at the IUCN World Conservation Congress in Barcelona Spain.

Recent Events

March 19, 2008 Eric Chivian spoke at the World Wildlife Fund U.S. Headquarters in Washington D.C.

March 11, 2008 Eric Chivian spoke at Defenders of Wildlife National Headquarters in Washington, D.C.

February 25, 2008Aaron Bernstein spoke at the COHAB 2 - Second International Conference on Health & Biodiversity, 2008 in Galway, Ireland.

February 21, 2008Aaron Bernstein spoke at the Royal College of Surgeons in Dublin, Ireland.

February 15, 2008Aaron Bernstein spoke at a side event to the Thirteenth meeting of the Subsidiary Body on Scientific, Technical and Technological Advice (SBSTTA 13) of the Convention on Biological Diversity.

February 6, 2008Eric Chivian and Aaron Bernstein spoke at Grand Rounds at Children's Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts.

November 27, 2007Eric Chivian spoke to the California Institute of Technology Biology Department.

November 13, 2007Eric Chivian spoke at the Marion County Medical Society in Ocala, Florida.