The following is the concluding segment from a lecture Dr. Herbert gave at a conference in Maine. Her lecture, entitled "Genes and Environment, Developmental and Chronic: An Inclusive Approach to Autism Science" was eye-opening to say the least, and is well-worth watching for anyone interested in the inter-connectivity of autism, genetics, and environmental toxicity. Her closing should be a call to awareness and action for all of us:
Will Women Lead the Environmental Health Movement?
How can we imagine that ordinary people might be able successfully to challenge the overwhelming internal logic of the global economic system because of concern over environmental health?
There is an Ethiopian proverb that when spider webs unite they can tie up a lion. The lion of the globally destructive patterns of production and consumption may one day be ensnared and ultimately domesticated by the gossamer webs of human consciousness and community action. What will happen when ordinary people, whose lives are often mortally wounded by the destruction of the biosphere, come to understand that their wounds are so often intimately related to the wounds of the earth?
What will happen when a working woman comes to the realization that her own breast cancer, her husband's lymphoma, her brother's melanoma, her son's learning disability, his best friend's attention deficit disorder, her daughter's endometriosis, her niece's cleft palate, her cousin's chronic anxiety and panic disorder, her best friend's severe chemical sensitivity, her best friend's daughter's asthma, her uncle's infertility, her neighbor's son's testicular cancer, and her sister's daughter's childhood leukemia may form a pattern?
What will happen when this working woman begins to understand that these new human pandemics that effect her community and her family directly may be profoundly connected to what is happening to the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, and the animals of the earth? I believe this working woman will understand that the cancers and infertilities of the fish, the disappearance of the frogs, the cleft palates of the mice, the shifts in gender orientations of the birds, the susceptibility to viruses and infections of the seals, the disappearance of the song birds--that all of this and much, much more may be telling us a story that is also our story.
The story that the birds and the fish and the mice are telling us is the story of inter-being; the story that all life and earth is truly, breath-takingly, concretely connected right now, and that what we do to the mice of the field, and the birds of the sky, and the creatures of the forrest is also, ultimately, what we do to ourselves and to our families right now.
I do not believe that we can hide from this story much longer. It is one of the great stories of our time. The very human protest against the massive, entrenched, and toxic system of global production and consumption may seem unrealistic economically and politically, but is it any less realistic than the Quaker protests in Europe and the United States that played such a key role in ending the 350 year-old slave trade? I do not invoke the parallel to ending the slave trade lightly, for we are as enchained by toxic chemicals, and by ozone depletion, by climate change and the destruction of nature as we once were enchained by slavery. I believe that environmental health may be one of the greatest human rights issues of the new millennium, and thus our biggest challenge.
(Please forgive any slight discrepancies in my transcription - I did my best but I'm no professional!)