Tuesday, September 20, 2022
6-7:15pm Eastern Time (US and Canada)
~ University of Pittsburgh School of Public Health Lecture ~
Patricia DeMarco, PhD
Senior Scholar and Adjunct Faculty, Chatham University
AND Vice President of the Forest Hills Borough Council
In one of the last public speeches of her life, Rachel Carson addressed the Kaiser Foundation Hospitals and Permanente Medical Group in San Francisco. Her thoughts on that occasion resonate today with even more clarity, as much that she feared in 1963 has become our reality. In that speech “On the Pollution of Our Environment” she said, “In spite of the truly marvelous inventiveness of the human brain, we are beginning to wonder whether our power to change the face of nature should not have been tempered with wisdom, for our own good, and with a greater sense of responsibility for the welfare of generations to come.” Carson used her knowledge of science and her early understanding of the interconnectedness of all living things to advocate for policy based on science. The challenges we are facing today can be addressed by recognizing that the laws of Nature are not negotiable. We must adjust our laws and our ways of interacting with the living earth and each other to align more closely to accommodate the laws of chemistry, physics, physiology, and ecology. 
Dr. Demarco is the author of Pathways to Our Sustainable Future – A Global Perspective from Pittsburgh (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2017). See her website for a Curriculum Vitae and current work.
Donations toward the speaker's honorarium are gratefully appreciated.
The C.F. Reynolds Medical History Society thanks the University of Pittsburgh Center for Bioethics and Health Law for its generous support of the continuing relevance of medical history in our world.
No comments:
Post a Comment