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Commonweal Newsletters

Newsletter | Letter from Michael Lerner

May 2007 Commonweal Newsletter Contents:

Download PDF of the May 2007 newsletter »

May 2007

See the full story below »

Please join us at Commonweal on Saturday, June 2, 2007 for the opening of:

Communities, Chemicals and the Pollution Within

A show of photographs by Peter Essick, photographer for the September, 2006 National Geographic story, "The Chemicals Within Us" and a conversation about the work of Commonweal's Biomonitoring Resource Center.

Joining us in this conversation will be individuals telling their stories about being tested for the presence of toxic chemicals in their bodies and how this information has changed how they choose to live.

From 12 noon until 4 With lunch served at 12:30 And presentations beginning at 2 pm There will be an open house in the Commonweal Garden from 10 until noon that morning.

more information »

We are confronted with insurmountable opportunities

It really does feel like the politics of the possible is changing. From Nancy Pelosi raising her arm in the pose of Rosie the Riveter as she took the gavel to become the Speaker of the House to the Supreme Court's April 2 decision on the EPA's authority to regulate greenhouse gases, I have this growing sense that the people of the United States want to create a different story of who we are and how we relate to each other and the world.

The tragedy, of course, is what it took to get here. The list of outrages is so long: the war in Iraq, Abu Ghraib, Jack Abramoff and Ralph Reed, the living conditions at Walter Reed Hospital and the Bush Administration's censorship of science, seen most vividly in the muzzling of NASA work on climate change but also in its interfering with the FDA, EPA and other government agencies that are charged with protecting the American people. But here we are.

A majority of the people of our country are now unhappy with the status quo. On March 22, the Pew Research Center released the results of its poll, "Trends in American Values and Core Attitudes, 1987-2007." One of the many findings was that just three in 10 Americans say they are satisfied with the way things are going, a 25 percent decrease in the past seven years.

But dissatisfaction with the present does not necessarily translate into hope for the future. A Lake Research Associates' analysis released just after last November's election showed that 66% of Democrats in last November's election (and 40% of both Republican and Democratic voters) said that they expected life for the next generation of Americans to be worse than life today.

As the child of post-World War II immigrants, this loss of the American dream is especially troubling to me. And maybe being troubled is part of why I wanted to share the above data with all of you, to better engage you in creating the possibility of solutions that result in a better world for our children and for their children.

The eclectic nature of Commonweal allows us to work on solutions to many parts of the problems that are facing our country and the world. As you can read in this issue of the newsletter:

• Burr Heneman's Ocean Policy Project is saving seabirds and seabird habitat around the world.
• David Steinhart's Juvenile Justice Program is improving aftercare services for young people released from custody.
• The Commonweal Garden, led by Penny Livingston-Stark and James Stark, is developing a food forest and teaching people how to live in a mutually enhancing relationship with the earth.
• Rachel Naomi Remen's Institute for the Study of Health and Illness at Commonweal (ISHI) is helping medical students and physicians rekindle and sustain the deep commitment that first drew them to medicine.
• The Commonweal Cancer Help Program, coordinated by Waz Thomas, is hosting its 134th healing retreat for people with cancer.
• The New School, which Michael Lerner is leading along with Cynthia Loebig, is hoping to be, as Michael writes, "an antidote to despair."

Each of these programs aims to solve a set of our world's problems. And while the entire solution to the loss of seabirds or the quality of medical care or any of the Commonweal problems is not yet apparent, I believe that the discovery of these solutions comes from working on the parts of the problem that can be solved now. Finding solutions to smaller problems (especially when you avoid the hubris that fools you into thinking that the smaller problem is all there is to solve) can teach us how to address the bigger, more intractable troubles of our times.

I know this is true for the area of Commonweal's work that continues to be most of my daily program focus: the problem of environmental contaminants and their impact on human health. Through the Collaborative on Health and the Environment (CHE), the Commonweal Biomonitoring Resource Center, The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, Health Care Without Harm, the Commonweal Autism Project and the newly formed Californians for a Healthy and Green Economy (CHANGE), Commonweal's Health and Environment programs and the coalitions and campaigns we are engaged with are expanding the number of people and organizations who know about the links between their health problems and chemicals and other contaminants. More importantly, we are creating partial solutions to the problem of disease-related contamination that can teach us how to solve the larger problem.

Three examples:

I sit on the steering committee of the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics (safecosmetics.org ). In the last two years, the Campaign and its partner organizations have convinced every major nail polish manufacturer in the United States to reformulate their products to remove three dangerous chemicals — phthalates, toluene and formaldehyde. In the process, campaign members learned an enormous amount about the economics and manufacturing processes of the cosmetics industry and built strong relationships with each other and with progressive cosmetics producers and retailers. The nail polish victory taught the Campaign a great deal about what it will take to make every personal care product safer.

Health Care Without Harm (noharm.org ), the organization I left to become the Executive Director of Commonweal, began its efforts in 1996 with a focus on convincing the U.S. health care industry to reduce the volume and toxicity of their waste and to find alternatives to incineration. Those efforts have been largely successful. But rather than confining its efforts to those problems, Health Care Without Harm used its experience to expand internationally and to take on the materials used to make medical products, the sourcing and sustainability of hospital food and the design and operation of hospital buildings. Thousands of health care professionals are now involved in solving the environmental problems in their workplace and learning that these and other problems can be solved.

On April 3, 2007, the Washington State Legislature passed the nation's first ban on all forms of the toxic flame retardants known as PBDEs (watoxics.org ). Biomonitoring has revealed that PBDEs build up in our environment, in our bodies and even in mothers' breast milk. The passage of similar legislation in Maine was made more likely when, in February, the state's Department of Environmental Protection announced their support for the ban because safer alternatives were readily available. (Similar legislation has been introduced in California by Speaker Pro Tempore Sally Lieber, the Assemblywoman from Mountain View, California.) In Washington and Maine, these bans on toxic flame retardants are one step in a larger multi-state strategy to create a new way of managing chemicals. Figuring out many smaller solutions will be necessary to solve the massive problem of tens of thousands of chemicals in commerce that have never been reviewed and approved as safe. The multi-state coalition, known as SAFER (State Alliance for Federal Reform of Chemicals Policy, which now includes CHANGE), is crafting its own policy strategies to add to this learning community. Soon, we expect a bill to be introduced in Congress that will add to this effort to build solutions to the problem of chemical harm.

These efforts, like all the Commonweal programs — from ISHI to Ocean Policy — share an intention of service and pragmatic hope. They are solution-based but modest in recognizing the multifaceted nature of the problem and the limits of the solution at hand. They understand the difference between healing and cure. And that, fundamentally, is why I am so grateful to be here.

With my best wishes,

Charlotte Brody
Executive Director

Commonweal's Ocean Policy Program

by Burr Heneman

Commonweal's Ocean Policy Program has been engaged in an exciting new program for the past year and a half. As we reported last spring, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation decided to embark on a two-year, $3 million initiative for seabird and shorebird conservation in the Pacific Basin. The Foundation asked us to help by developing the strategies and recommending potential projects and grantees for the initiative.

Last April, the Foundation invited proposals for the 11 highest priority projects identified in our report and requested our participation in assisting Foundation staff and grantees with the proposal process and subsequent monitoring of the approved projects. By the time you read this, all of those projects will be underway.

Two great threats to the world's 200-plus seabird species overshadow all others. One is the depredations of non-native species—rats, most often — on the islands where seabirds breed. Birds generally are most vulnerable when they are nesting, and that is the one season in which seabirds must return to land. Most seabird species, as they evolved, occupied the safe niche of remote islands free from mammalian predators. Safe, at least until shipwrecks and human settlements introduced species against which seabirds have no defense.

Recently I saw a devastating video of a gang of house mice gradually eating a goose-sized albatross chick alive. Mice on Gough Island in the South Atlantic are estimated to eat as many as 1million petrel, shearwater and albatross chicks a year.

The Packard Foundation's single largest investment in the initiative is funding Island Conservation and BirdLife International to eradicate non-native predators on seabird breeding islands in Mexico, Fiji, Paulau, New Caledonia, French Polynesia and the Federated States of Micronesia.

Albatrosses, the largest of which have wingspans of 11 feet, are among the most dramatic of all birds. As the great ornithologist Robert Cushman Murphy wrote on his first voyage to the Southern Ocean, "I now belong to a higher cult of mortals, for I have seen the albatross."

Of the 21 species of albatross, 19 are endangered. The cause, however, is not non-native predators on their breeding islands, but drowning. Albatross death is considered bycatch—collateral damage in the longline tuna and swordfish fisheries, the largest commercial fisheries in the world. Colleagues at Duke University estimate that five million hooks are deployed every day on 100,000 miles of line. These fisheries are fast and efficient operations, with lines and hooks going over the side at high speed. But before the baited hooks sink beyond reach, they remain near the surface just long enough for albatross and their petrel cousins to steal an occasional bait and, very infrequently, become hooked and dragged underwater by the weighted line.

With 1.5 billion hooks set every year, however, those rare events add up to tens of thousands of deaths and declining populations of these grand birds.

Two projects that the Packard Foundation has funded will develop, engineer and test special gear that could, if used by fishermen, reduce these deaths to negligible levels. One of these projects is led by a long-time colleague at the University of Washington Sea Grant Program, the other, by a colleague at the Australian Antarctic Division. And BirdLife International will initiate what will likely be a multi-year campaign to ensure that these bycatch-reduction technologies are used by longline vessels in most of the Pacific.

A few projects involve conservation of shorebirds. Sparrow-sized sanderlings, working the transition between beach and surf, are perhaps the most familiar to us. Of the dozens of shorebird species, it's the largest ones—the curlews and godwits—that we hope will help fill the ocean-sized gaps in our knowledge of shorebird migration in the Pacific.

Most shorebird species are suffering from loss and degradation of the habitats they depend on—that much is known. But it's hard to know which places are most urgent to protect if we don't know where the birds spend the winter or where they stop on their long fall and spring migrations. The Foundation and a U.S. wildlife agency are jointly funding a project led by PRBO-Conservation Science to equip about 60 godwits and curlews with satellite transmitters. For as long as six months, these minute devices will beam the precise locations of the birds up to a satellite that relays the information to receivers in a lab.

Satellite transmitters, that only now have been miniaturized sufficiently to be carried by the largest shorebirds, are revolutionizing our knowledge about the use of space by animals as diverse as elephants and elephant seals, great white sharks and white-chinned petrels, loggerhead turtles and humpback whales. If we learn where these animals go, we can also learn something about why, and then, perhaps, discover how to protect them. Satellite tracking maps of albatross movements, for example, combined with maps of where longline fishing is concentrated, are informing the campaign to require fishing vessels to use proven bycatch-reduction techniques where the birds and fishing overlap.

The initiative has funded other projects as well, but these examples perhaps will serve to provide a sense of the whole.

On a personal note, the opportunity to work with the Packard Foundation on this initiative has meant a welcome return to the world of birds and bird conservation that I left, except for occasional forays, 20 years ago. Seabirds have been a great love of mine since, as a teenager, I visited my first seabird island: Matinicus Rock, a few acres of granite and guano 25 miles off the coast of Maine. Reaching my arm far into a storm-petrel burrow and bringing out a handful of downy chick to be banded changed my life, though I didn't know it at the time. I was not to visit another seabird island until 1971, for the first of many memorable stays on the Farallon Islands, off San Francisco. Since then, my pursuit of seabirds and seabird conservation issues has taken me to a host of magical islands: the Pribilof Islands in the Bering Sea, the Galapagos, Shetland and Fair Isle in the North Sea, tiny Vatuira in Fiji, and Harqus, Jana, Karan and Kurayn, exotic names of a string of fly specks in the Persian Gulf.

If enough projects such as those in the Packard Foundation's initiative are successful,

The Institute for the Study of Health and Illness at Commonweal

by Rachel Naomi Remen, M.D.

On February 28th as I held the final session of the Healer's Art curriculum, I could see the faces of the UCSF first year medical students, many of them young women, filled with the intention of living a life of service to others. I know how hard and how demanding this life can be and I am grateful to be able to be of support and service to them. In their jeans and their sweatshirts, they are the future of medicine and I hope that their training will be worthy of them. ISHI's course, taught halfway through their first year, feels a bit like planting seeds in fertile ground that others will tend and nourish. We can only plant with as much integrity as we have and bless each one.

Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen

Surrounding the sea of young faces were the familiar faces of nine of the 13 teaching physicians who have been leading the small group sessions. Teaching in the Healer's Art and being with the students in an intimate and candid discussion about the meaning of the work is such a rewarding experience for us that all 13 faculty faithfully show up at our first faculty meeting each year hoping to win a student group in the lottery we hold every fall. The faculty represent many different specialties: oncology, orthopedics, family medicine, neurology, OB/gyn, pediatrics and general internal medicine; but all have in common a deep love for the work and the integrity to do it in their own way. Knowing them has made me proud to be a physician. Many of us have taught this course together for more than 10 years. As we get older together the caring and camaraderie gets better and better.

I also remembered, with a sense of awe and gratitude, that there are closing sessions, just like the one I am leading, happening in 53 other medical schools around the country (and in Israel and Slovenia). 1806 students took the Healer's Art last year and more than 2000 are expected to take it this year. The many emails from 300 other course directors and faculty and the course evaluations of their students tell us that their experience of the course is similar to our own, despite sharp regional differences and differences in the culture of their schools.

This community of dedicated teaching physicians will widen and deepen again this coming summer when 16 physicians fly in from various parts of the country and set their bags down on the porch of Commonweal's Pacific House for an intensive week of training in how to teach the Healer's Art curriculum. We expect that an additional 10 schools will offer the Healer's Art in 2008.

Many of the faculty who teach the Healer's Art curriculum also take part in ISHI's Finding Meaning in Medicine program and attend monthly discussion groups held in medical school classrooms or living rooms around the country; or they participate in discussions on our Finding Meaning in Medicine website. We are delighted to introduce our newest staff member, Dr. Karen Wexman, who is the new Coordinator of the FMM program. Karen is a Graduate of Stanford University School of Medicine and an internist with a special interest in the care of the aged. She has done medical counseling for people challenged with illness and was one of the first physicians to attend the ISHI workshops. She is also the mom of two of my godsons.

Our research and publications program continues to thrive. In the fall newsletter I described the many Healer's Art presentations that were made by Dr. Michael Rabow and other medical school course directors at 12 medical schools and two annual professional conferences around the country. Since then a paper describing national research outcomes is in its final pre-publication process at the Journal of General Internal Medicine (JGIM). Another research paper is in preparation, and a discussion paper has been accepted by The Medical Encounter: The Journal of the Association of the Doctor and the Patient. A smaller commentary paper has been submitted to JAMA and a column was requested and is being written for American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine Newsletter.

In support of the courage it takes for each of us to bring our authentic selves to our work and our lives, this coming year ISHI will offer four large workshops. Our upcoming programs include: Meaning in Medicine: Finding Strength in Community (for physicians); The Healing Power of Story: Opening to a Deeper Human Connection (for physicians and other health professionals) and Practical Intuition: Activating Your Inner Consultant (for physicians and other health professionals).

Our most unique new workshop, Reviving the Heart of Work: A Master Class of Tools for Teaching Professional Groups, is designed for all teaching professionals including doctors, nurses, social workers, lawyers, coaches, chaplains and therapists. This workshop will train educators in tools and approaches that have proved so effective for professionals in the ISHI workshops over the past 15 years.

Blessings to you all in your own work of service.

Juvenile Justice Program Receives a Major Grant from the Haigh-Scatena Foundation

by David Steinhart

The Haigh-Scatena Foundation has awarded $780,000 to Commonweal on behalf of a "Juvenile Justice Re-entry Partnership" of four California advocacy organizations. In addition to Commonweal, the partnership includes the Youth Law Center, the National Council on Crime and Delinquency (NCCD) and the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice (CJCJ). Together these organizations will seek changes in state and local policies and funding streams to improve aftercare services for children released from secure confinement. Commonweal's Juvenile Justice Program Director, David Steinhart, notes that: "In the California juvenile justice world, this is a significant commitment of foundation funds. The partners to this grant represent the most capable and experienced juvenile justice advocacy organizations in the state. Moreover, this is an area that desperately needs work. In most California counties, the current level of aftercare provided to these children is dismal." Grant funds will be divided equally among the partner organizations to implement four interwoven workplans. Commonweal will focus on the development of state-level funds and policies for juvenile justice re-entry programs. CJCJ will establish a web-based juvenile justice re-entry resource and information center. NCCD will test new program models for girls returning from secure custody and the Youth Law Center will work on several fronts to improve children's post-custody access to health care, employment and community services.

Aside from this news, the Juvenile Justice Program has been a bee hive of activity over the last several months. Here are some other highlights:

Major state juvenile justice overhaul on the table in Sacramento

Top of the list: the California Governor has proposed to shift half the population of the Division of Juvenile Justice ("DJJ," formerly the California Youth Authority) to county programs and facilities, along with a large state-county block grant to pay for local offender programs. This proposal looks almost exactly like the pivotal recommendation of the 1988 Commonweal book, Reforming the CYA, written by Paul and Anne DeMuro and Steve Lerner. Now, two decades after we issued our report, the Governor has embraced our positionónot because he read our book, but because the state's hand is forced in 2007 by the soaring cost of operating DJJ under court-mandated reforms (Farrell v. Tilton). The state operating cost has skyrocketed to about $200,000 per ward per year! So now, cutting the DJJ institutional population looks good to the state. The Governor's plan is to shift all non-violent state wards to county control, and to ban future commitments of these young people to the state system. At the same time the Governor proposes to pay counties $94,000 per juvenile per year (for shifted cases) to support local dispositions for these cases. Lots of bugs in the proposal need to be worked outóin particular, counties want guarantees that they will get back not only these hard-to-manage offenders, but also enough guaranteed money to handle them locally. Your Program Director, David Steinhart, is working closely with lawmakers, state administrators and county stakeholders to make the proposal happen, with support under grants from the JEHT and W.A. Gerbode Foundations.

Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative (JDAI)

Our work on this Annie E. Casey Foundation national project continues. In March 2007, the Casey Foundation renewed our technical assistance grant for an additional year. Under this grant, we help JDAI sites in some 20 states develop criteria for secure detention of children upon arrest as well as alternatives to secure custody. In November 2006, David Steinhart's 100 page national "Practice Guide to Juvenile Detention Risk Assessment" was published by the Casey Foundation.

Youth Violence Prevention

We continue to work on youth violence prevention objectives under a grant from the California Wellness Foundation. Commonweal serves as an information resource to a statewide network of violence prevention stakeholders. We produce bi-annual analyses of state budget allocations for community-level violence reduction programs. In addition, we work directly with policymakers to help sustain the state revenue streams that support high-risk youth programs in 58 California counties, including the Juvenile Justice Crime Prevention Act adopted in 2000.

The BioDrift Project and Other Efforts of the Commonweal Biomonitoring Resource Center

by Sharyle Patton

The BioDrift Project, a joint project by the Commonweal Biomonitoring Resource Center, El Quinto Sol, Californians for Pesticide Reform and Pesticide Action Network will be publishing results in mid-May. This pioneer study paired a PANNA-invented tool, the Driftcatcher, which can measure the presence of pesticides in air, with human biomonitoring to determine if the pesticide, chlorpyrifos, might be finding its way into residents who live near orange groves during times of peak spraying. Chlorpyrifos has been banned for household use but is still used for agricultural purposes. Chlorpyrifos has been linked to a wide variety of health outcomes. El Quinto Sol is releasing an official data report in May, and 12 members of the Valley community who stepped forward to be tested will be telling their stories about the unsafe levels of pesticides found in their biosamples. We hope this project will encourage other communities across the country to pair biomonitoring projects with other environmental monitoring tools that can indicate the source of contamination.

The biomonitoring program in California, signed into law by Governor Schwarzenegger last summer, awaits funding to begin its work. Davis Baltz, senior policy analyst for Commonweal and lead CBRC staff person for this program, continues to work with Senator Perata in encouraging the Governor to provide the resources promised at the signing. Commonweal and the Breast Cancer Fund were strong supporters for this bill from the beginning and continue to play a strong role in its implementation.

Nationally, CBRC has coordinated the testing of 35 individuals in seven states for the presence of a set of flame retardants called Pads, a set of phthalates, chemicals found in personal care products and soft plastics, and Bisphenol A, a chemical found in most Nalgene water bottles, the lining of tin cans and some hard plastics. All of these chemicals are linked to troubling health outcomes in laboratory tests. The project is being co-chaired by non-governmental organizations in each of the seven states that will use the resulting data to push for chemical policy reform at the legislative level or in campaigns that will encourage manufacturers to reformulate products. A full report with an overview of the results will be presented in the next Commonweal newsletter.

Internationally, CBRC has begun to explore engagement in the Stockholm Convention's Global Monitoring Plan, a project that will help evaluate the effectiveness of this global treaty, which bans or severely restricts 12 of the worst persistent organic pollutants by monitoring human serum or human milk. We have met with the World Health Organization among other agencies that will be tasked with developing and implementing monitoring protocols around the globe in those countries that are parties to the Convention.

Commonweal Supports New Paradigm of Autism Research and Treatment

by Michael Lerner

A small but highly leveraged Commonweal Autism Project continues the work Commonweal co-founder Carolyn Brown did with children with learning and behavior disorders. The project supports a new paradigm of autism research and treatment that would have been dear to Carolyn's heart.

The new autism paradigm proposes that autism is not an exclusively genetic disease, as long believed. Rather, environmental factors may contribute to its development. And biomedical treatments that reduce environmental stresses and enhance resilience may help children improve or in rare cases recover completely.

The good news is that this new paradigm is rapidly gaining ground in the media, in the advocacy groups, and in the research and clinical communities. It has the support of tens of thousands of parents across the country who have embraced this new paradigm as they have seen their children improve, sometimes dramatically, on these biomedical treatments. I should emphasize that the new treatments do not help all children by any means. Autism is a label that is applied to a very wide range of conditions with different etiologies.

Commonweal works closely with Harvard professor Martha Herbert and University of California, Davis professor Robert Hendren in this area, as well as with Elise Miller, Director of the Learning and Developmental Disabilities Initiative of the Collaborative on Health and the Environment. On February 8 — 10, 2008, we will hold the third annual Commonweal Conference on Autism Research and Treatment, which brings together leaders from the clinical, research and advocacy communities across the United States who are committed to this new paradigm. The conference will be preceded by a public symposium at the University of California San Francisco, School of Medicine.

We owe a special note of thanks to Sheila Opperman, New School volunteer and Commonweal Research Associate, who has taken on the formidable task of coordinating the Strategy Group of NPART (New Paradigm of Autism Research and Treatment) and of organizing the public symposium and conference.

The Collaborative on Health and the Environment

by Eleni Sotos

In February, CHE's Fertility and Early Pregnancy Compromise Working Group teamed with the University of California at San Francisco's new Program in Reproductive Health and the Environment to host the 2007 Summit on Environmental Challenges to Reproductive Health and Fertility. Over 400 reproductive health scientists, professionals, advocates, community based groups, public health officials and others attended the gathering, far exceeding our expectations and resulting in plans to continue the various dialogs and collaborations that attendees expressed interest in continuing. The outstanding work of CHE-Fertility's Facilitator, Alison Carlson, was instrumental in bringing the summit to fruition. Alison is taking a much-deserved sabbatical. We are pleased that CHE's Program Associate, Julia Varshavsky, is the new coordinator of CHE-Fertility.

CHE is also hosting a new project called the Women's Health and the Environment Initiative (WHEI). The desire to place a greater emphasis on women's health collectively emerged among participants attending an initial regional CHE meeting last year. The initiative is in its formative stage and will be hosting a gathering the day before a major conference on women's environmental health this month in Pittsburgh (hosted by the Heinz Endowments, Teresa Heinz and Magee-Women's Hospital) with over 60 women's health colleagues to discuss potential areas of collaboration. A new toolkit, developed by CHE staff, will be distributed at the conference and a new website on women's health will be launched.

An exciting recent development is the partnership of CHE and the Health and Environment Alliance (HEAL) to raise the level of public and professional dialogue on the impact of the environment on human health and to further strengthen transatlantic and international work. HEAL is based in Brussels, Belgium, and aims to raise awareness of how environmental protection and sustainability improves health. It has a primary focus on advocacy of health issues in environmental policy-making in the institutions of the European Union. CHE and HEAL have created a list serve for its Partners, which is focused on discussing environment and health developments in Europe and identifying opportunities for collaborative engagement within emerging opportunities.

Fred von Saal lecturing on the female reproductive system at the USCF CHE Conference

Another recent development is that the CHE Working Group on Parkinson's Disease (PD) and the Environment is partnering with the Parkinson's Institute and the Parkinson's Action Network to organize a conference in June on the connection between Parkinson's disease and environmental factors. This gathering will model past CHE meetings and bring together key PD constituencies. This working group is co-coordinated by Jackie Hunt Christensen of Parkinson's Action Network and Elise Miller, coordinator of CHE's Learning and Developmental Disabilities Initiative.a

One of CHE's largest and most active working groups, the Learning and Developmental Disabilities Initiative (LDDI) is hosting its second national meeting next month at the Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta, Georgia. This conference will examine multiple environmental factors that may contribute to learning and developmental disabilities and some mental health problems. Elise Miller is leading this effort.

Many other exciting activities are happening in CHE, but space limits describing all of them in detail. In addition to the groups mentioned above, our working groups on breast cancer, asthma, cancer, EMFs, integrative health and science and our regional partnerships in Washington, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Alaska continue to engage in fruitful dialog through their list serves and various activities.

Our web site, www.HealthandEnvironment.org is CHE Central for information about our activities and resources, including our National Partnerships Calls, working groups and our popular Toxicant and Disease Database. I encourage you to contact me at Eleni@HealthandEnvironment.org if you have any questions or would like to get involved.

Commonweal Cancer Help Program

Where Does the Healing Power of the Cancer Help Program Come From?

by Michael Lerner

Where does the healing power of the Cancer Help Program come from? I have asked myself that question for over twenty years. Perhaps it comes from the healing power of intention, of shared wounds, of solace, of community, of stories, of understanding, of compassion, and of love. The intention of every wounded participant who comes is to find the deepest possible healing. There is solace in being together with others who share these wounds. These wounds and the solace of being together create community. In that community, we entrust each other with our stories. We often say things we have never said to anyone before. Sharing our stories helps us understand each other. Understanding leads to compassion. Compassion flows gently into love. And love heals.

There is more, of course. Touch, skillful massage, heals scarred bodies that may never have been touched with such care before. Nourishment comes not only from exquisite food but from a staff singularly dedicated to caring. There is astonishment at what sandtrays reveal, for art also heals. There is the healing power of laughter in the night of healing words and poems. There is the ancient yoga of Waz Thomas and Jnani Chapman. There is Jenepher Stowell's exploration of sacred space. And there is the inner community of the Cancer Help Program staff, itself bound by mutual respect, by real caring for each other, and by the adventure of decades of meaningful work together that is so rare in this world. Participants feel this community embrace them with a sweetness they have rarely if ever known.

There is the knowing that each Cancer Help Program is, literally, a gift from the thousand participants who have come before. It is a gift of the experience and wisdom they shared that we pass on. And it is a gift because only the contributions of alumni make possible a week that costs almost three times as much to offer as we charge, thus keeping this work as accessible to people of all incomes as possible.

The April retreat will be our 134th Cancer Help Program. Directly afterward Rachel Naomi Remen and I fly to Washington to speak at the tenth anniversary of the Smith Farm Center for Healing and the Arts. We are celebrating the life gift of Barbara Smith Coleman, who was an alumna of the Commonweal Cancer Help Program. Barbara was so moved by the Commonweal experience that she founded Smith Farm to offer the Cancer Help Program on the East Coast, and left a small foundation to support its work.

Rachel and I will be speaking at the anniversary along with Smith Farm Executive Director Shanti Norris, Julia Rowland, Director of the Office of Cancer Survivorship at the National Cancer Institute, and Susan Braun, Director of the Institute for Women's Health at Commonweal and of the American Society of Clinical Oncology Foundation in Washington.

The Fund for Women's Health at Commonweal

by Susan Braun

The Fund for Women's Health at Commonweal, in conjunction with the Breast Cancer Fund, held its inaugural conference in Bolinas April 10 ñ 12. The topic was "Non-hereditary Factors in Women's Cancers: an Agenda for Learning and Action."

The gathering was, to our knowledge, the first time that leaders from several major American mainstream cancer organizations have ever sat together with environmental health scientists, clinicians and advocacy leaders in this way. The goals of the meeting were: shedding light on environmental and other non-hereditary causes of women's cancers; exploring potential linkages between information about non-hereditary causes of cancer and the research, education, program and policy agendas of women's cancer advocacy organizations; and identifying possible areas of shared action among those organizations toward the goal of primary cancer prevention.

Participants at the forum included leading representatives of the Cancer Research and Prevention Foundation; the Lung Cancer Alliance; the Ovarian Cancer National Alliance; CancerCare; Y-ME National Breast Cancer Organization; the Wellness Community; the William Graham Foundation for Melanoma Research; Sister's Network; the Canadian Campaign to Control Cancer; SHARE; and Susan G. Komen for the Cure.

Scientific talks were provided by Richard Jackson from the University of California, Berkeley; Molly Jacobs from the University of Massachusetts, Lowell; Pete Myers from Environmental Health Sciences; Janet Gray from Vassar College; Vicky Seewaldt from Duke University; and Julia Brody from Silent Spring Institute. Their topics included cancer causation and prevention, cancer and the new paradigm in environmental health sciences, cancer incidence trends and environmental contaminants, environmental contributors to carcinogenesis, biomarkers as a potential for testing environmental impact, and non-hereditary factors in breast canceróan overview of the science as a model for other cancers. Public policy topics and potential future directions for collaborative work were addressed by Jeanne Rizzo of the Breast Cancer Fund, Charlotte Brody of Commonweal, Michael Lerner representing CHE, and Kevin Donegan from the Breast Cancer Fund.

The group dynamic was collegial and interactive throughout the meeting and grew into one of a core of "pioneers" interested in action. As more information was shared and more dialog ensued, the line between "environmental health advocacy" and "cancer patient advocacy" grew less distinct, and a shared sense of urgency was expressed for finding ways to prevent humans from the devastation of cancer. Several of the cancer leaders shared that much of the information provided at the forum was new to them, and recognized that they had not focused attention on environmental factors in cancer beyond lifestyle. It was clear and poignant that leaders from these two types of organizations have seldom if ever shared public dialogue and there was a pointed interest in bringing others into the circle and engaging as a shared learning community that has the potential to drive towards educational, research, and public policy outcomes.

The New School at Commonweal

by Michelle Moore

In January we initiated the work of the New School at Commonweal, a collaborative learning project exploring the ecological, cultural and inner life questions that arise for us as individuals and as participants in larger communities in this time of global crisis. How do we live lives of service and meaning in these times? What do we tell our children about how to live in these times? What themes are emerging in culture and the inner life that may guide us toward the just and sustainable world we need to create together?

Our initial methods of inquiry with our extended community include conversations, convenings and collaborations that address the human capacity to move toward an ecological renaissance in all fields of human endeavoróin science and technology, in the arts and humanities, in religion and spirituality and in the emerging global civil society movement.

We began by hosting teleconference conversations with remarkable people and inviting listeners to ask questions in the last half hour of each interview. These calls will continue on a weekly basis throughout the year and are being recorded. If you would like to participate in one of these conversations, please email us at thenewschool@commonweal. org to join our mailing list. To listen to past calls visit our website's Audio Archives: www.commonweal.org/new-school/audio_archives.html. Selected calls will also be broadcast on KWMR (West Marin Radio) starting in May. In the first several months we interviewed

• Ted Schettler, M.D., Science Director of the Science and Environmental Health Network
• Ram Dass, Spiritual Teacher and Co-Founder of Seva Foundation
• Rachel Naomi Remen, M.D., Director of ISHI
• Fredi Kronenberg, Ph.D., Professor of Clinical Physiology and Director of the Richard and Linda Rosenthal Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine at Columbia University
• Peter Warshall, Ph.D., former editor of Whole Earth magazine
• Dean Radin, Ph.D., Senior Scientist at the Institute of Noetic Sciences
• Thomas Yeomans, Ph.D., Founder of the Concord Institute
• Chet Tchozewski, Founder and Executive Director of the Global Greengrants Fund
• Sushmita Ghosh, past President and a member of Ashoka's Leadership Team
• Chris Desser, Fellow at the Tomales Bay Institute

Here are quotes from some of these conversations:

"I think if weíre able in the far distant future to look back on this period of time in which weíve been living, weíll see that it was characterized by an extraordinary and unjustified faith in the development of technologies that were not at all invented in the wisdom of the world."
— Ted Schettler, M.D.

"Interconnection is the religion of the environmental movement."
— Peter Warshall

"The concept of things being separate doesnít exist at a deep physical level. All that remains are relationships between things."
— Dean Radin

"The stories began reporting not just about this social entrepreneurial who was a hero, but how a bunch of people took initiative in their own way and connected. So the whole dynamic becomes not just about one person being great, but strategies for connecting with greatness."
— Sushmita Ghosh

The New School hosted two events in early spring: Peter Warshall joined us for a gathering of friends and community to talk about The Spiritual Labor of Earth Healing. And Penny Livingston-Stark and James Stark of the Commonweal Garden hosted an inspiring introduction to Permaculture that included discussions in the yurt and a pizza lunch, hot out of the clay oven! We plan to host future gatherings in the garden every season, each a unique experience. And we will continue to host live events throughout the year at locations around the Bay Area.

Jenepher Stowell Turns Sixty in Bluff, Utah

by Michael Lerner

Commonweal Retreat Center Director Jenepher Stowell celebrated her sixtieth birthday in Bluff, Utah. Forty of her friends, many with Commonweal connections, showed up for the occasion. Bluff is a tiny town of perhaps 500 souls a stone's throw from Monument Valley in the Four Corners region of the state. Eight of us flew to Denver, caught a small plane to Durango, and drove several hours through the night via Cortez to Bluff. We awoke to this beautiful desert settlement on the banks of a river marked by high red bluffs.

Jenepher had worked at an Episcopal Mission to the Navajo Nation in Bluff as a teen-ager. She returned decades later after she had joined Commonweal as Retreat Center Director. She fell in love with the town again. When local developers threatened to develop the beautiful canyon that is the backdrop for the whole town, Jenepher, using a modest inheritance from her father, bought the entire canyon. She deeded it to conservation. She then catalyzed a conservation movement in Bluff that led to the further purchase of the main farm in the community. Her father Estes Stowell would have been proud. He was a catalytic force in conserving Storm King on the bluffs of another river, the Hudson.

Jenepher owns a piece of land adjacent to the canyon she dedicated to conservation. She has placed a small silver trailer under a cluster of old cottonwoods near a seasonal stream. She plans to build a barn-like house there. On her birthday, the full moon, we planted sixty cottonwoods. The following morning, a few of us joined Jenepher in the 20 degree early morning light to climb the cliffs on her property to view the exquisite Anasazi and Navajo cliff drawings that grace her canyon walls. At the foot of the cliffs are thousands of shards of Anasazi and Navajo pottery.

With Gratitude

We express our deep gratitude to the following organizations that have supported Commonweal this year:

We offer special thanks and gratitude to the following Commonweal Friends for their generous contributions during the last six months: