Symposium

Title: How Health Depends on Nature

Organizer: Mary Gant NIEHS/NIH

Session Goals:
To explore in depth the critical importance of biodiversity to human health

Additional Discussants:

Eric Chivian  (Moderator), Director, Center for Health & the Global Environment, Harvard U.
Richard Ostfeld , Senior Scientist and Animal Ecologist, Institute of Ecosystem Studies
David Newman  Chief, Natural Products Branch, National Cancer Institute, NIH.
Joshua Rosenthal , Deputy Director, International Training & Research, Fogarty International Center, NIH.
Charles Perrings , Professor of Environmental Economics at Arizona State University (PowerPoint)

Summary:
The symposium on Human Health and Biodiversity will explore the ties between biodiversity and human health.  Eric Chivian, one of the editors of a new book, Sustaining Life, will act as the panel moderator and provide a brief overview of the many ways in which human health is inextricably linked to biodiversity.  Other speakers will provide details on the following topics:

o The ways in which complex interactions in ecological communities influence risk of  diseases.

o The contribution of ecosystem services to human health

o The value of biodiversity to the search for new medicines and therapies

o The role of the Earth’s animals, plants, and microbes in understanding human physiology, disease, and dysfunction and in preventing and treating disease and dysfunction.

o The economic value of ecosystem services.