Commonweal

Commonweal Newsletters

May 17, 2005

Dear Commonweal Friends:

I hope this Letter finds you well. The Spring has been exquisitely beautiful in Bolinas. I am writing to you from London, in the middle of a month-long trip to Europe - Paris, London, Oxford and Scotland. My mother's people came from England, Ireland and Scotland. So in some ways I have come home.

Here is the news from Commonweal.

David Parker Retires as Commonweal Executive Vice President

David Parker has been the quiet partner who has run the business side of Commonweal for 27 years. He came to Commonweal in 1978 when we were a tiny, struggling nonprofit. David is a deeply intelligent, literate man who might under other circumstances have taught literature. But the opportunities that life opened up were in business management. As a young man, he became friends with Jerry Garcia, founder of the famous band The Grateful Dead. I have actually heard a tape on which David plays washboard in some early recordings with Garcia and fellow musicians Ron "Pigpen" McKernan, and Bob Weir. David became the business manager for the Grateful Dead, an arduous role with a famously anarchic collection of musicians. When, after eight years, he decided to find another line of work, a mutual friend referred him to Commonweal. David later brought his wife Nadine Parker to Commonweal, where she worked with him as bookkeeper and administrative assistant until her retirement in 2004.

Being responsible for the business and finance side of a nonprofit organization is one of the most critical responsibilities in the life and work of a nonprofit. David has carried this work out impeccably for 27 years. His honesty, humility and complete dedication to Commonweal have served this community well. We are deeply grateful for his career commitment to serving Commonweal.

David and Nadine are selling their home in Petaluma, and Nadine has been on-line looking at properties in Mendocino County, where they hope to find a place with a few acres. David says he will not know what he is going to do next until he is sitting in their new home in the country when all the busy-ness of the transition is over. Then, he says, he will ask himself: "What's next?"

And Charlotte Brody Arrives as Commonweal Executive Director

As David and Nadine sell their house in Petaluma and move north, Charlotte Brody and her husband Tom have sold their house in Virginia and are moving west. Charlotte's home office furnishings have arrived, and her sunny corner office at Commonweal is now festooned with her quilt collection, symbolic, it strikes me, of her skill in bringing the patchwork programs of Commonweal together in a beautiful pattern. After eighteen months of a rigorous bi-coastal commute, Charlotte is coming to her new home. Charlotte writes:

"This morning, as I was watching my sleep-deprived 18 year old son, Sam, eat his breakfast at the kitchen counter before heading off to another one of his last days in high school in Northern Virginia, I thought again of how many changes my family will be making in the next few months and how lucky I feel to be caught up in this particular piece of transformation.

"Commonweal was very gracious in allowing me to take on the role of Executive Director without giving up being home with my family in Virginia as Sam, our youngest, finished high school. Now he is preparing to go off to the University of Virginia and his father and I are preparing to turn into West-Marin-Californians-without-children-at-home. Soon I will start to think about which books to give to the public library book sale and which I can't yet give up as we prepare to head west at the beginning of July. But for a few more weeks, I can concentrate on my piece of running Commonweal and my participation in Health Care Without Harm, the Collaborative on Health and the Environment, the Commonweal Biomonitoring Center, the Trans-Atlantic Collaboration on Chemicals and the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics."

The Story of the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics

I have a special place in my heart for Charlotte's central work guiding the development of the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics. I think it is one of the most wonderful and successful efforts the environmental health community has made recently to reduce a serious source of chemical exposure for women and children and to educate women about their chemical exposures. Charlotte writes:

"I want to write a little about the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics not only because I am very proud of what we've accomplished to date but also because it's a good example of how Commonweal-connected environmental health projects develop.

"The Safe Cosmetics Campaign began at the juncture of biomonitoring and Health Care Without Harm. HCWH had just completed several years of successful work to get the Food and Drug Administration to recognize the problem with the chemical used to make PVC (polyvinyl chloride - a widely used and problematic plastic) soft and flexible. The chemical of concern is DEHP, one of a family of phthalates that leach out of whatever material they're in and into the surrounding environment. When DEHP leaches out of tubing and IV bags made out of PVC, the chemical gets into the medication and then into the patient receiving treatment. Some patient populations, especially premature infants receiving multiple therapies in neonatal intensive care units, could receive more DEHP from PVC equipment containing the phthalate than the levels that caused reproductive damage in animal studies. This is a problem that doesn't need to occur when we have other plastics that don't contain or leach phthalates.

" I am very proud of what we did through HCWH to address this problem. We worked intensively with the two biggest manufacturers of PVC IV equipment--Baxter and Abbott (now Hospira) to move away from PVC with DEHP to a safer generation of plastic materials.

"Because of this work to reduce exposure to phthalates, we were very concerned when we read the Center for Disease Control's (CDC) Biomonitoring Report on the levels of chemicals in a cross-section of the American people. The CDC found phthalates in everyone. And the phthalate exposure numbers were especially high for women of childbearing age--the population that needs the most protection if we aim to protect the next generation before they are conceived.

"Trying to figure out where the phthalates in women of childbearing age were coming from led to the birth of the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics. The European Union's new regulations require that personal care products be formulated without using two phthalates and 450 other chemicals that human or animal studies show cause cancer, mutation or reproductive damage. We believed it made no sense for European women of childbearing age to be better protected from harmful chemicals than American women. Based on this reasoning, the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics asked companies to reformulate their personal care products to exclude these chemicals globally-not just for Europe.

"To date, and after some pushing and cajoling, most of the major personal care companies in the United States have agreed to global reformulation of their personal care products. The companies that have agreed include Estee Lauder, Revlon and L'Oreil, all of which first refused our request. In addition, over 116 companies have signed the Campaign's Compact for Global Production of Safer Health and Beauty Products, pledging not only to not use chemicals that are known or strongly suspected of causing cancer, mutation or birth defects in their products but also to implement substitution plans that replace all questionable materials with safer alternatives in every market they serve. Now the Campaign is figuring out how to provide the technical assistance these companies need to move towards safer, greener products.

"The Breast Cancer Fund, Women's Voices For the Earth, Friends of the Earth, Health Care Without Harm, the Environmental Working Group, National Environmental Trust, Commonweal and the Alliance for a Healthy Tomorrow are the leading organizations in the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics. You can learn more and join the campaign at www.safecosmetics.org."

Commonweal Garden Reborn with James Stark and Penny Livingston-Stark

Symbolically there is no more beautiful expression of the new energy at Commonweal than the rebirth of the Commonweal Garden under the direction of James Stark and Penny Livingston-Stark. They write:

"The Commonweal Garden is teeming with life as Spring unfolds here with all its wonder.

"We moved into the Garden just in time to celebrate Winter Solstice. Since then so much has taken place. We now have clean running water from the spring. The house has new wiring and earth plaster walls inside and we have painted the exterior. The spring pruning has been completed, vegetable beds readied for planting, and strawberries, raspberries, currants, mulberries and medicinal plants are in the earth. And we have to mention Valentina, one of our two baby goats, who arrived on Valentine's Day.

"Our education program began in January and we have held Wilderness Awareness trainings and started our 4 seasons Permaculture Design Course that takes place one Sunday a month for a year. The 30 participants have been doing hands-on work in the garden and attending classes in the Main Commonweal Building. This last weekend we just held a beekeeping workshop where we built 22 beehives. Our bees arrive next week during our 5-day Permaculture course for New College students in Santa Rosa.

"Kendra and Michael Presley, our Garden partners, will be moving into the Garden in a few weeks, bringing with them a wealth of experience in gardening, farming, goat herding, medicinal plants, music, and meteorology."

We are grateful for funding for the Garden from Peter Barnes, Commonweal and the Compton Foundation.

Steve Lerner's Book Diamond: A Struggle for Environmental Justice Goes into Second Printing at MIT as He Tours the Country

Steve Lerner's new book from MIT Press, Diamond: A Struggle for Environmental Justice in Louisiana's Chemical Corridor, is out to some excellent reviews, and he has been touring the country talking about it. So far he has done media work and bookstore talks in Boston, New York, Washington, D.C., New Orleans, San Francisco, and Marin County. Future stops will include Philadelphia and Tampa. As a result of these efforts, Diamond, which was published in March, is going into its second printing.

Diamond tells a story some of you know. It is the story of how Commonweal became engaged in the successful effort to help Margie Richard and her friends in the all-black neighborhood of Diamond, part of the segregated community of Norco, Louisiana, to move away from a Shell chemical plant after a struggle of well over a decade. I will not retell the story here, except to say Margie Richard became the first African-American woman to win the Goldman Environment Award, and Norco has become an iconic victory in the struggle of fence-line communities across America and around the world for health and justice. Please join us in getting the word about Diamond out to people who might be interested. The book is available over the internet at Amazon.com.

Steve is currently at work on his new book, Fair Growth: Building Mixed-Income Communities. He recently interviewed Michael Gecan, a senior organizer at the Industrial Areas Foundation, who helps low-income communities build powerful coalitions through their churches, labor unions, and schools, so that they can demand their fare share of government funds for community improvements. "You get as much justice as you can compel," Gecan believes.

What Will "The Tipping Point" Be in the Renewal of Medical Education? Fifty Medical Schools Offer Rachel Naomi Remen's Healer's Art Course

Administrator Christina Tucker reports that the Institute for the Study of Health and Illness (ISHI) has now trained directors from thirty-eight leading U.S and Canadian medical schools to offer The Healer's Art course that Rachel Naomi Remen, M.D. started at the University of California San Francisco School of Medicine a dozen years ago.

Faculty members from eight new medical schools will participate in the May Healer's Art Faculty Development Training at Commonweal's Retreat Center. The September Faculty Development Training is filling fast. Rachel estimates an additional twelve medical schools may start offering The Healer's Art in 2006. Included in this growing list of new medical schools is the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia - our first European medical school. This will bring the number of medical schools offering The Healer's Art to fifty. And that is a truly remarkable accomplishment. It raises the question: What is the tipping point at which this great innovation in medical education becomes deeply part of the meaning of medicine again?

In response to the continuing growth of The Healer's Art, ISHI welcomes its newest staff member, Catherine Osterbye, as The Healer's Art Program Associate. Catherine brings a wonderful combination of skills and experiences including ten years as director of an adjunct health professions school.

Rachel often observes that one of the critical areas that Commonweal has worked in for many years has been the use of community as a tool for healing. This approach - first implemented by Commonweal twenty years ago in the Cancer Help Program - has been adapted by ISHI to enable individual physicians to heal from the rigor of their training and to further the healing of the medical profession. One of the most exciting new developments at ISHI over the past year is the growth of the Finding Meaning in Medicine program - a national (and international) conversation and discovery process for physicians led by ISHI Associate Director Bob Rufsvold, M.D.

The first Finding Meaning in Medicine group was started by Rachel eight years ago in Mill Valley. It continues to meet today. The group draws on a community of sixty participating physicians. A dozen of these doctors typically gather once a month for two hours to discuss a theme basic to the experience of practicing medicine, such as compassion, loss, healing, risk, and renewal. They also gather to share professional experiences with the theme in story form. They describe their own personal experiences with the shared theme of the gathering. The sense of mutual support created by this community of doctors who have similar values helps each individual to continually renew - and sometimes rediscover - a sense of joy and purpose in the work of medicine.

Bob Ruvsfold has established the www.meaninginmedicine.org website to extend this community worldwide. There are now over five hundred physicians registered to this online Finding Meaning in Medicine community, many from places as far away as India, Argentina, Iceland, Spain, Germany, Slovenia, Thailand, and Australia - twenty countries in total. Out of this Internet connection many physicians have formed Finding Meaning in Medicine groups that meet monthly at their workplaces. In the United States alone there are now close to one hundred of these FMM groups.

Recently, ISHI conducted a survey of these participating FMM physicians about their experience and here are some of the responses:

I have been coming to the FMM group, and it is one of the most valuable parts of my life.

When I experience the depth of sharing with physicians from my own medical community, it truly hits home the common bond of humanity we all share.

FMM has helped me to design my medical practice in such a way that maximizes my satisfaction as well as that of my patients.

There is a lot about my work at the hospital that I am deeply dissatisfied with right now. I haven't fully realized how to consistently bring compassionate care to my patients - I'm bombarded with messages to excel in research or to see a lot of patients. I like FMM because it helps me to be daring - to stand for what I feel is important to my patients.

A new ISHI CME retreat workshop based on FMM will be offered at Commonweal for the first time in July 2005. Titled Meaning in Medicine: Finding Strength in Community, this four-day workshop gives participating doctors the experience of the FMM group process, as well as guidance in developing and sustaining their own Finding Meaning in Medicine group in their home community.

We are grateful for the ongoing support of many individual contributions, two anonymous donors, and foundations such as the Bernard Osher Foundation, the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations and the George Family Fund, without which this work would not be possible.

Three Lessons from the 122nd Commonweal Cancer Help Program - And Commonheart, The Commonweal Heart Program, Is Growing

We completed the 122nd Commonweal Cancer Help Program on the Full Moon of Passover, two days before I departed for Europe. Again, eight wonderful people gathered to explore how they could heal in the face of often life-threatening diagnoses. Three truths that have emerged over many retreats seem worth sharing:

First, there is no relationship between the medical prognosis and the suffering someone is experiencing. Many participants with primary cancers come with good medical prospects and yet are anxious beyond their tolerance. Others, with more advanced cancers, may be serene, joyful, and skilled both in their efforts to live as long as possible and in their sense of how to face the prospect of death.

Second, much of the suffering people experience is not directly a result of having cancer, but rather a result of their conscious or sometimes less conscious need to resolve life issues that a sense of the finitude of life has made more acute. So much of the healing work at Commonweal focuses not only on healing with cancer but also on healing our lives.

Third, the Cancer Help Program staff is really a marvel of psychic integration and mutual support. Many of the staff have worked together for a decade or more. Everyone on the staff matters. On this retreat we had Coordinator Waz Thomas and psychotherapist Stuart Horance, Retreat Site Director Jenepher Stowell and Sandtray facilitator Irene Gallwey, masseuses Jnani Chapman and Monica Kaufer, Waz's assistant Maria Straatmann, and kitchen staff Rebecca Katz, and Ethan Funk. This deeply experienced community of people hold each other with a mutual affection and respect that is tangible for participants, who feel safe, welcomed, and nourished in a way they often have never felt before. The staff and the site together are the crucible that hold the experience of the participants in the Cancer Help Program.

I am also really delighted to report that Commonheart, the Commonweal support program for people living with heart disease, is growing. We started Commonheart some months after my heart attack as I became personally aware of how many people were living in West Marin without a high quality support program. It quickly grew to a community of sixteen people that meets monthly for a two-hour session. What impressed me was how deeply and skillfully our group has been able to work together to support each other. Now, Commonheart Coordinator Maria Straatmann is responding to strong community interest by forming a second Commonheart support group. This growing experience with working with heart disease may in time lead us to offer some residential programs as well.

Finally, I recently wrote to all Cancer Help Program alumni thanking many of them for their generous support and letting them know that we still are about $25,000 short of what we need for Cancer Help Program scholarship support for this year. It is an urgent need. The Cancer Help Program is virtually wholly reliant on fees for services and support from Commonweal alumni and friends. If you can help support the Cancer Help Program, please let us know.

Pete Myers Leads Pioneering Conference on Green Chemistry; Future Bright for Chemicals That Will Do No Harm

Pete Myers, a Senior Research Associate at Commonweal and Director of the Environmental Health Information Center in Charlottesville, Virginia, is one of the great pioneers of the emerging environmental health movement. Co-author with Theo Colborn of Our Stolen Future, former Executive Director of the W. Alton Jones Foundation, Pete has returned to non-profit work as the man who delivers The New York Times of environmental health, AboveTheFold, to thousands of us across the country and around the world, every day.

Some months ago Pete began talking about the promise of Green Chemistry - a world where chemicals were made as if health and the environment mattered. On March 30, Pete and two Commonweal friends, Kathy Sessions and Karen Peabody O'Brien, brought together the most remarkable Commonweal conference on environmental health since the founding of Health Care Without Harm almost nine years ago.

Pete brought three of the leading chemists in the green chemistry movement together with a critical group of experienced environmental health scientists, activists, and funders. The chemistry in the room - forgive the term - was catalytic. The chemists told us that they knew how to make chemicals that have a far lower prospect of harming life than chemicals made today. They told us they had some prospects ready for market. And they told us that that had a methodology for educating the chemists of the future so that they would be trained to find less harmful or even harmless substitutes for many existing chemicals.

Those of us who have been engaged with the environmental health movement for a decade or more got a visceral, tangible sense that we had seen the future and we were convinced it could work. It will not take place overnight, and it will not be easy. But instead of simply struggling to reduce the harm of the most toxic chemicals - instead of just fighting against bad things - we had a vision we could move toward.

That vision is one of a plant-based chemical industry, not reliant on petroleum reserves in far-away countries but on green plants that grow in every Congressional district in the United States. These green chemical plants cannot be blown up in terrible industrial accidents or by terrorists. The shipment of these chemicals by rail or truck does not pose great safety risks. And the chemicals themselves are simply far less harmful to life than the petroleum-based chemicals we make today.

So Commonweal is joining with other colleagues to promote the vision of a new world based not only on green power, but on green chemistry as well. It is a prospect that lightens the heart.

Commonweal Biomonitoring Center at the Cutting Edge Of the Revolution in Environmental Health Sciences

A major new initiative in our environmental health work is the Commonweal Biomonitoring Center. For those of you who are not familiar with the term, "biomonitoring" (biological monitoring) is the measurement of chemical compounds in the human body, detected in biospecimens such as blood, urine, breastmilk, adipose (fat) tissue, hair, bone, saliva and meconium. The resulting data, especially when they refer to synthetic chemicals known or suspected to be toxic, are often referred to as our "chemical body burden."

Biomonitoring is a cutting edge technology that is now capable of detecting over 400 different environmental contaminants in our bodies and the bodies of many other species. Biomonitoring is transforming the debate on chemical management because we are no longer confined to theoretical assumptions about our exposures based on EPA extrapolations from known sources of pollution. Instead, we have this amazing capacity to look inside ourselves and know the chemical cocktails we each contain.

In that sense, biomonitoring is what is known in the information technologies as a disruptive technology, in that this new capacity to measure chemical contaminants in our bodies with unprecedented specificity, at much lower doses than was ever possible before, is transforming the entire debate about environmental health. The transformation of the debate is also profoundly linked to the broader revolution in environmental health sciences caused by the exploding literature on endocrine disrupting chemicals. This new scientific literature makes it clear that fetal exposures to many contaminants at the lowest imaginable levels at critical windows in development can affect the developing fetus throughout its lifetime by affecting genetic expression. In fact, a whole new field is opening up exploring the fetal origins of adult disease. Biomonitoring is the tool that links the new environmental health sciences with knowledge of what is in our bodies and in the bodies of young women and men as they begin their families.

As many of you remember, in 2001, Commonweal, together with the Environmental Working Group and Mt. Sinai School of Medicine in New York, released one of the first studies about chemicals in the human body with data from nine volunteers including the journalist Bill Moyers and a community of Commonweal staff and friends including Sharyle Patton, Davis Baltz, Charlotte Brody, Lexi Rome, Lucy Waletzky, Monique Harden, and me. That study is still online at www.bodyburden.org, part of the Environmental Working Group's (EWG) extraordinary website where you can find an amazing amount of data on what chemicals were in our bodies, what is known about their health effects, and what products they are found in.

Sharyle Patton and Davis Baltz are, respectively, the Director and Associate Director of the Commonweal Biomonitoring Center. They are intensively focused this spring on several initiatives.

The California Biomonitoring Project has recruited a dozen influential Californians to participate in a study to demonstrate the widespread exposure to chemicals in the environment from people of all walks of life. Blood, urine, and hair samples have been provided by the group. When the testing is complete, Commonweal will offer the participants a variety of ways of exploring the impact of the experience with their extended communities and with other Californians.

Internationally, the Center is also engaged in the International POPs (Persistent Organic Pollutants) Elimination Network's "Keep the Promise Campaign," which is biomonitoring chicken eggs around the world in time for the first Conference of Parties for the Stockholm Convention. You may remember Commonweal played a substantial role in winning the POPs Treaty, the first global treaty to ban 12 of the world's most toxic chemicals. The egg study is generating headlines in countries around the world as government delegations prepare for the Conference of Parties gathering in Uruguay in May. We hope that by pointing out to government delegates the high levels of POPs found in eggs, we can encourage them to remember the promises made during treaty negotiations, when governments agreed to protect the health of future generations by eliminating POPs chemicals.

The Center is also collaborating in a pilot study project with Latino farm workers, mostly women, who live in a farming community near Fresno and are deeply concerned with their frequent exposures to pesticides. Pesticide Action Network North America (PANNA) is the lead partner on this project, working closely with community members and local groups. This cleverly designed project focuses on Dursban, a chemical banned nationally for domestic use but permitted in California for agricultural purposes. What is special about this project is that it seeks to match data from a "drift catcher" that will monitor air for Dursban at times of spraying and off-season with urine levels of Dursban at spraying time and off-season. In other words, the hope is to be able to demonstrate whether these mothers are being directly exposed at high levels to a chemical banned for domestic use because of its dangers to health.

Commonweal is also partnering with the Breast Cancer Fund in sponsoring Senate Bill 600 (Ortiz and Perata) - the Healthy Californians Biomonitoring Program. The bill would create a model for the nation by establishing the first-ever community-based, statewide, biomonitoring program. Our work in support of this bill has been extremely interesting and instructive to us, since the legislation has provoked controversy among those committed to a precautionary approach to chemical policy. I will have more to say about the lessons we have learned in the next Letter. Suffice it to say here that, despite the criticisms we have heard, we believe the legislation has merit and hope it becomes law.

The Center is also developing a website resource center about biomonitoring for those community groups interested in learning more about biomonitoring with the intent of carrying out their own biomonitoring projects. This resource can be accessed at www.commonweal.org.

On a personal note, I am delighted to report that Davis Baltz and Catherine Porter, formerly a senior staff member at the Women's Cancer Resource Center in Oakland, are to be married in June. (Many of you know Commonweal's other Catherine Porter, who has worked with us on so many projects). We wish these two dedicated and wonderful beings every happiness.

We are grateful to the New York Community Trust, the John Merck Fund, the Fine Family Foundation, Marion Weber and the Bioneers Fund for funding the Commonweal Biomonitoring Center.

Collaborative on Health and the Environment Tops 1500 Partners Moving Environmental Health into the Health Mainstream

The Collaborative on Health and the Environment remains the principle work I do at Commonweal, along with the Cancer Help Program. If you are interested in joining me in this inquiry, all you have to do is become a CHE Partner at www.healthandenvironment.org. CHE costs nothing, sends only two emails a month, and invites you to join wonderful monthly Partner calls with national authorities on environmental health. Among the headlines from CHE this Spring:

The founding CHE Pennsylvania (CHE-Penn) conference, undertaken with the sponsorship of the Heinz Endowments, was convened at the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute. Nearly three hundred people attended this two-day meeting. Teresa Heinz Kerry delivered an exceptional keynote address that clearly demonstrated a remarkable grasp of environmental health issues. CHE-Penn was fortunate to have the support of Dr. Ronald Herberman, the Director of the Cancer Institute. Dr. Herberman has created the Center for Environmental Oncology at the Institute, with CHE Partner and longtime cancer research visionary Devra Lee Davis, Ph.D. as Director.

Another landmark CHE conference in late February was titled Understanding Environmental Contaminants and Human Fertility: Science and Strategy, co-hosted by the Women's Health program at Stanford University. This workshop brought together many of the leading researchers on infertility, top government and academic scientists, physicians, and key advocacy groups. You could feel the field move forward during the three-day conference in a rare and remarkable way. CHE Partner Allison Carlson brought the gathering to fruition.

On a smaller yet equally successful scale, the CHE conference held in Portland, Oregon this past February drew a community of over one hundred engaged participants, many of whom will remain engaged in CHE Oregon as it focuses on its priority interests and activity areas. CHE is currently planning upcoming regional meetings in Louisiana in the fall and Alaska in the winter.

Since August, CHE has held Partnership calls on obesity, particulate matter and air quality, national environmental policy, hormesis, infertility, environmental cardiology and other topics. Upcoming calls on cumulative impacts of environmental stressors, health effects from lead exposure and biomonitoring are being planned.

CHE's Working and Discussion Groups remain the backbone of CHE. The newly formed Discussion Group on Asthma and the Environment is off to a strong start with 82 members. The Learning and Developmental Disabilities Initiative (LDDI) Working Group is hosting a regional meeting in New York in June, and will include a CHE national reception that will be open to Partners in the New York/New Jersey/Connecticut area. Several Partners who are part of the Fertility and Early Pregnancy Compromise Working Group are engaged in drafting a consensus statement emanating from the recent conference co-hosted by CHE and Stanford University on infertility and contaminants. The Cancer Working Group has grown to 88 Partners. The group is reviewing a CHE-commissioned state-of-the-science paper from noted epidemiologist Richard Clapp, PhD. and colleagues of Boston University, titled Environmental And Occupational Causes Of Cancer: A Review Of Recent Scientific Literature.

The core CHE Commonweal team includes Eleni Sotos, Jeanette Swafford, Steve Heilig, Sharyle Patton, Davis Baltz, Frieda Nixdorf, Charlotte Brody and me.

We are grateful to the Beldon Foundation, the Cedar Tree Foundation, the Compton Foundation, the Mitchell Kapor Foundation, the Marisla Foundation, the Panta Rhea Foundation, the John Merck Fund, and the Nathan Cummings Foundation for support of CHE.

Commonweal Juvenile Justice Program Gains New Support for David Steinhart's Work at State and National Levels

There is also gratifying new recognition of the critical role David Steinhart plays in state and national work to protect young people in the juvenile justice system. David has been invited to serve on two task force groups convened by the Schwarzenegger Administration to advise policymakers on cleaning up conditions at the California Youth Authority and on the restructuring of state/local juvenile justice services in California. David also continues to serve as an expert and advisor to lawmakers on reforms related to parole and aftercare for juvenile offenders, to mental health evaluations for arrested youth and to the funding of statewide youth crime prevention programs. The bottom line is that David remains the go-to guy for expertise on juvenile justice for both the Administration and the Legislature in Sacramento.

The California Wellness Foundation (TCWF), a major supporter of the Commonweal Juvenile Justice Program, has awarded $40,000 for David's work on youth violence prevention objectives through June 2005. TCWF has also invited Commonweal to apply for continuation funds that would support this work for three additional years, through June 2008. The Juvenile Justice Program is also in the early part of a two-year cycle of funds from the JEHT foundation to support California juvenile justice reforms.

At a national level, the Annie E. Casey Foundation has awarded $ 55,000 to the Juvenile Justice Program for a one-year, multi-state effort to develop and upgrade risk assessment instruments used by public agencies to determine whether minors should be incarcerated or sent home after an arrest. Children, unlike adults, have no right to bail upon arrest, and they are frequently locked up for long periods while the court process inches forward. When a minor is first taken to a detention facility, risk-assessment instruments are used by the intake staff to guide them in making the critical "detain-release" decision. Currently, David is working on Casey detention projects in the states of Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Washington and California. The grant includes funds for development of a manual on risk-assessment best-practices that will be distributed nationally by the Casey Foundation.

Heartfelt Thanks to Individuals Who Support Commonweal

Sometimes it may seem to you, gentle reader, that Commonweal survives largely on grants from foundations large and small. That is true for some Commonweal programs. But it is decidedly not true for the Cancer Help Program ISHI, the Retreat Center and the Commonweal Garden, which are all heavily dependent on contributions from individuals. Individual contributions represent the absolutely critical fabric that holds all of Commonweal together. We do not take these contributions for granted for a moment.

So we offer special and deep gratitude to the following Commonweal Friends:

Lynda Abdoo, Suzannah & Gerry Abrams, Peter W. Adesman, Eva Altman, Donna and Tom Ambrogi, Evangeline Andarsio, MD, Carolyn Anderson, Ron Anderson, Rita Arditti, Janet E. Arnesty, Robert M. Arnold, John R. Atkinson, Anthony Back, Eva Bading, Cheryl Lynn Bailey, Joseph Ciro Barbaccia, Harriet Barlow, Jacquelyn Barnard, Ann and John Barnes, Kenneth Barnes, Peter F. Barnes, Marvin Barrett, Katherine Barshay, Lindy and Timothy Bartels, Jose Bayona, Carl Bellini, Maria & Patrick Bennett, Steven Berman, John D. Berry, Walter N. Bieneman, Judith & Leon Bloomfield, Ed and Nancy Boyce, William E. Boyle, MD, Ivy Brackup, Barbara Bramble, Georgian Branigan, Paul Braunstein, Paula Braveman, MD, MPH & John Levin, Delia Brinton, Alan Briskin, Steven Bromer, Martin I. Bronk, Joe Bunker, Dan Burton, Jody Bush, Maggi Butterfield-Brown, CAL Insurance & Associates, Inc, Fritjof Capra, Michael Castleman, Stephen G. Chandler, MD, Kathy Chang, RN, Magili A. Chapman, Nini Charles McCone, Catherine T. Clark-Sayles, Linda Hawes Clever, MD, Wayne Cochran, John Colla-Negri, Neil and Judy Collier, Wendy Collins, Philip J. Collora, Julia Connelly, Carroll Covey, Les and Roxanne Cramer, Annie Crotts, Emanuel & Elaine Crystal, Barry Custer, Anna Dabney Margaret A. Dale, Dale C. Dallas, MD, Nicholas J. Daniello, MD, J. Daniels, Marcy Darnovsky, John M. Davey and Lisa M. Eriksen, Thomas and Gun Denhart, J.P. Richards, Dillingham, Penelope Dinsmore, Mia Dodson, John Doss, William Drayton, Gail Dubinsky, Barbara Duchon, Richard Eagan, Stephen R. Early, Barbara and Richard Edmonds, Judith Einbinder, Mary Ellis-Hogan, Barry Elson, MD, Jennifer A. Emberly, Nancy England, Elizabeth Evans, Hilarie Faberman, Lois A. Fairley, Nan Feagin, Gary Feldbau, Bruce Feldstein, Tom Ferguson, MD, Monique Ferris, Debra Fidler, Carolyn Fine Friedman, Don Fink, MD, Anne Firth Murray , Patrick W. Flanigan, MD, Samuel and Juliet Fleischmann, Cheryl Flynn, Alan and Carolyn Follett, Marilee R. Ford, William W. Fore, Rochelle D. Foster, Franciscan Friars of St. Barbara, Charles L. and Virginia M. Fritz, Katherine Fulton, Alma R. Garcia-Smith, Howard Gardner, Neil Gendel, Deborah J. Gerner, Kathy Gerwig, Louise Gilbert, Joan Gilbert Martin, Joseph Gluck, Terri and Jeffrey Goldberg, Daniel Goleman, John C. Good, Amnon Goodman, AnneKathryn Goodman, Paula Gordon, Susan Gotbetter, Robert Gould, Peter Goyton, Sally & Gil Gradinger, Cynthia J. Graham, Lindy Rose Graham, Richard M. and Gretchen D. Grant, Billie B. Green, David A. Greenburg, Russell Greenfield, Sadja Greenwood, Joan and David Grubin, David S. Gullion, MD, Jan Guthrie, Harold T. Hahn, Betsy Hall, Charles And Susan Halpern, Richard Handin, Cecelia Hard, Ralph W. Hartman, Susan Healey, Robert E. Heerens, Eileen Heitzler, Jane Helwig, Jane F. Irvine Henderson, Rachelle Herdman, MD, ND, Tali Herman, Evangeline Hermanson, Dan Hogan, Connie Holmes, Roy W. Howard, Rita Hurault, Raymond F. Irish, Ian Johnson, Karen Johnson Levitt, Marty Johnson, MFCC, Gary S. Jones, Robert Emlen Jones, Karen Jurgens, Miki Kashtan, Monica Kaufer, Jerry and Jacqui Kaufman, Ramesh & Lakshmi Kaza, Bryce and Ann Kellams, Pat Kelley, Gary Kelson, Kathi J. Kemper, MD, Jill Kneerim, Roy F. and Mildred Knudsen, Harriet Kossman, Maxine Kraemer, Mary Kraft, MD, Cynthia G. Kreger, Alyse Laemmle. Philip J. Landrigan, MD, George & Ann Hogle, Cara Beth Lee, Hayden Jon & Faith Lee, Philip Lee, MD, Lenore Lefer, MS, MFCC, Susan Lessin, Marianna Leuschel, Iyana Christine Leveque, Barbara Lipkin-Luther, Sally Little Berger, Erika Bast Little, Madeline Littlefield, Betty P. Lupton, Kenderton S. & Francis S. Lynch II, Mrs. Winifred Lynn, Alicia Lyttle, Dean G. Magraw, Anne Maiden Brown, Iona Main, Victoria H. Maizes, Betty Joan Maly, S. Jerome Mandel, Lucille & Phil Marchand, Esther Marks, Beth A. Martin-Kool, Winifred Mauzy, Margaret McNamara, Michael R. McVay, MD, Diane Eve Meier, Martha A. Mejia, Mark Mendelsohn, Josie Merck, Elise Miller, George D. Miller, James S. Miller, Alar Mirka, Sylvia Mitchell, Cherie Mohrfeld, Fakhri Monem, George G. Montgomery, Jr., Paul Moore, PhD, Laura Morgan, MD, Debbie Morrison, Dorothy & Milton Mozen, Mr. Dvorson, Craig Mukai, Fitzhugh Mullan, MD, Mary Louise Myers, Ronald and Irene Nakasone, George S. and Penny L. Nann, Albert P. Neilson, Lewis T. Nerenberg, MD, Marion Nestle, Alan B. Newman, Mary Noel Pepys, Mary O'Brien, Alexander Stephens & Judith Orr, Nancy and James Osborn, Gail Paradise, John H. Parks, Ruth C. Penn, Janet Perlman, MD, Stephen R. Perry, Michael Pertschuk, Jack & Eve Petajan, Barbara A. Peters, Joan E. Peterson, Betty Jane and Robert Phillips, Julien and Diane Phillips, Tim Pile, Edith Piltch, Diana Pittman, Ricki Pollycove, Sarah D. Pritts, Michael D. Rabbino, Betty Raffin Arnold, James A. Ramenofsky, Moe and Pam Reitman, Rachel Richman, Norbert Riedy, Elizabeth Rintoul Farneth, Vicki Robin, Antoinette Rose, MD, Ruth Rosen, Roger A. Rosenblatt, Kenneth and Joan Rosenthal, Debra and Bill Rostenberg, William Rothbard, Diana and Don Rothman, Dr. A. Harvey and Sally Salans, San Francisco Oncology Associates Medical Group, Inc., Earl de Fremery & Kathryn Sawyer, Sarah Schafer, Howard Schechter, Margaret Schreiber, E. Sue Schueler, Peter and Carol Shaughnessy, Anore M. Shaw, Steven A. Sherman, William Shore, Sidney & Margaret Silver, Jay Simoneaux, Norval Sinclair, Mark A. Sinkoff, Lee Slaff, Eva H. Slinker, Robin Smith, Ann Sobieski Carman, David Spaw, Jay Spector, Judith Aliyah Stein, Mary Stephens Smith, Patricia Stevens, Patricia Stewart, Carolyn and Herbert Strauss, Sara Stuart, Barbara & Hugo Swan, Toby Symington, Gladys Taylor McGarey, Steve Tempest. Eleanor & Todd Tennyson, Karen Thompson, Louise M.Todd, Jennifer H. Valentine, Gerard Van Wesep, Frances E. Vaughan, Jim Vest, Francesca Vietor and Mark Hertsgaard, Murry and Marilyn Waldman, Barbara E. and Herbert A. Walker, Fong & Caroline Wang, Shirley Ward Deininger, Harold and Laura Ware, Tim Ware, Arthur K. Watchel, Marjan Wazeka, Marion R. Weber, Joan B. Webster, Nancy Weinstein, Arnold Weiss, Sharlene Weiss, RN, PhD, Ann Weissman, Albert and Susan Wells, Catherine G. West, MD, Mark and Karen Wexman, MD, Peter Whitehouse, Robert Wilson, Katie Wine, Stan Yogi, Lindsay Young, Rachael Young, Matthew B. Zwerling

Thanks to Foundations That Support Commonweal

In addition to the foundations I have thanked in the course of this Letter, I would like to express our deep gratitude to the following foundations that have supported Commonweal this year:

Alan and Nancy Baer Foundation, Alberta S. Kimball Foundation, Annie E. Casey Foundation, Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, Beldon Fund, Bernard Osher Foundation, Bioneers Fund, Breast Cancer Fund, California Endowment, California Wellness Foundation, Cedar Tree Foundation, Clean Water Fund, Compton Foundation, Inc., David L. Klein Jr. Foundation, Fine Family Foundation, Flow Fund Circle, Ford Foundation, French American Charitable Trust, George Family Foundation, Health Care Without Harm, JEHT Foundation, Jenifer Altman Foundation, John Merck Fund, Marin Breast Cancer Council, Marin Community Foundation, Marisla Foundation, Mitchell Kapor Foundation, Nathan Cummings Foundation, New York Community Trust, Panta Rhea Foundation, Resources Legacy Fund, Foundation-California Coastal and Marine Initiative, Seven Springs Foundation, Spencer Foundation, State Coastal Conservancy, Tides Center, Walter S. Johnson Foundation, Zellerbach Family Foundation

Conclusion

That is the news, dear friends, from Commonweal and from your itinerant correspondent in Europe. Burr Heneman asked that we save a report on the Commonweal Ocean Policy Program for the next Commonweal Letter.

We thank all readers of the Commonweal Letter for your ongoing interest in Commonweal's work. I want to close with a simple and true observation that we authentically need your support to enable us to keep the Cancer Help Program, ISHI, the Garden, and the environment and environmental health programs moving forward. I enclose an envelope in the hope that if you can make a contribution to Commonweal this Spring, you will help us keep our work vital and strong.

May your Spring be filled with peace and joy.

With warm best wishes,

Michael Lerner
President

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