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Book Reviews
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Ecological Medicine: Healing the Earth, Healing Ourselves
Edited by Kenny Ausubel
(Sierra Club Books; 2004; San Francisco; 248pps; $16.95)
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Editor Kenny Ausubel has been working on the Bioneer Conference for over 13 years. This year will be their 14th event (se the ad in this issue). This particular book, one in a series, is an anthology of some of the Bioneers presenters who focus on healing, medicine, the precautionary principle, risk assessment, the politics of cancer, Hoxsey, integrative medicine, herbs, relationships, toxic polluters, being unreasonable, non-local healing, ecopsycholgy, plant spirits... and calls for action. Some of the authors include: Diane Wilson, Katsi Cook, Larry Dossey, Andrew Weil, Melissa Nelson, Peter Montague, Samuel Epstein, Michael Lerner (founder of Commonweal, not the Tikkun editor), and others.
If you’ve never attended a Bioneers Conference or listened to their audio tapes or CDs or have never seen some of their presentations on video format, this is the second best. You can read their presentations. Of course it’s not the same. But the Bioneers and Sierra Club want this kind of information out as best as possible. Bioneers originated with the notion that we need to find and encourage the biological pioneers out there who are doing some serious work in helping the environment. Along with that impetus came a barrage of pioneers in certain other fields, political, metaphysical, building, gangs, agriculture, spirituality and others besides biology. It has represented the tent of the revolutionary vigor that is now taking place all over the world. As I was browsing the book, I fell upon Jeanne Achterberg’s essay on relationships. She writes that people in relationships have increased immune function, decreased wound healing time, lower sympathetic nervous system activity and very effective stress buffers. She goes on to say that it’s hard to kill a married man, even if he isn’t wild about his wife, and “we know that women who have girlfriends live forever.” “People in a relationship who can identify with a supportive community are at less risk for complications from virtually everything you can name.” Wow, time to get involved in relationships and in community support. Not only is it great for your health, but think of the insurance, for those who can’t afford it.
This book is all about solutions and you will be thrilled to find so many like-minded individuals, researchers, pioneers that you will have entered a community that hopefully will last a life time.
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