What if environment

Her role is working on revitalizing the curriculum for the masters programs in Environment and Management to focus on regenerative social and ecological innovations. Breadcrumb News. What if humans could have a positive effect on the environment?

Examples of these are:. Main menu To main content. Environmental work at If If's environmental work aims to reduce the environmental impact of our operations. If takes responsibility Insurance companies have a relatively low burden on the environment by their own actions. This question disrupts the relationship commonly depicted between the isolated gene and the encroaching epigenome and between a freestanding individual and an enveloping society.

It is also a question frequently asked by the reproductive toxicologists I studied. She argues that even when thinking beyond the gene, epigenetics perpetuates a distinct understanding of the relationship between individuals and society. Pointing to consistencies between epigenetic and genetic research, Strathern presents an analogy: the gene is to the individual as the epigenome is to society.

Like the individual, the gene in epigenetic research is still thought of as a freestanding entity, impacted by but standing apart from what exists outside it. Strathern argues that as with society, which is often understood in the social sciences to include everything that exists beyond the individual, epigenetic environments include potentially everything beyond the gene.

Moreover, both environment and society are abstract concepts concretized through examples of their parts, such as mountains or institutions. Social scientists have criticized such an understanding of the mother as the primary epigenetic environment for reinforcing maternal blame Mackendrick ; Richardson et al. However, as I will discuss in the final section of this essay, such criticisms assume that when the environment is a person, this person is an isolated individual the mother.

As I will show, in the epigenetic research on birth defects conducted by the DeTox Lab, the environment is not just a single person; rather, it comprises a series of people embedded and embodied in the sometimes toxic human and nonhuman environments of the past and the present. When the environment with which the gene interacts is both another person and the toxic chemicals to which present and previous generations were exposed, what models of disease causality and responsibility are reinforced and reconfigured?

While many indicators of health and wealth have improved during the past thirty-five years, including national GDP, literacy, maternal mortality, and longevity, new problems have also surfaced, including chronic diseases and illnesses related to environmental pollution such as cancers Lora-Wainwright and infertility Lamoreaux Today, government policies and citizen concerns continue to stress the improvement of the population through both social and biological measures.

Government campaigns aimed at encouraging parents to focus limited resources on fewer children, as well as prenatal health programs meant to increase fetal health and thereby population quality, continue to impact Chinese families today Zhu In the context of epigenetic research, the stakes of such findings are even higher, for here toxins are thought to potentially impact not only the generation currently in utero but also generations further in the future.

The laboratory researcher Wang Bo and I visited one of these hospitals, located within Nanjing, to speak further with his colleague Lin Ming, a physician in training who assists the DeTox Lab with its research. After quick introductions we put on white overcoats to begin our tour of the unit. In the hospital setting where Lin spends most of his time, his quiet laboratory demeanor becomes that of a confident physician in training.

Lin is clearly in his element; Wang and I are clearly out of ours. The lead nurse joins us as we move through the five or so patient rooms. In each room there are between three and five infants, accompanied by parents and often grandparents. Between nine and fifteen people occupy each space—some adults sleep, some sit on makeshift and hospital beds, some cradle their babies who are either awaiting or recovering from surgery.

Parents and grandparents watch me as, or more, carefully than I am watching Lin and the head nurse moving from patient to patient. I do my best to remain stoic, afraid I might express my sadness and fear.

I save my questions for afterward and nod as I learn about each infant: their condition, whether or not surgeries have been successful, and when they will most likely be discharged. One child has recently had a mass removed from her head. Another was born without an anus. Many are at different stages of recovery after having been surgically treated for rectal or intestinal deformities, the most common conditions diagnosed in the unit. After our patient visit we wash our hands and sit in a small back room where the lead nurse serves us the watermelon Wang Bo and I have brought.

The prearranged interview feels more like a conversation between colleagues; Wang Bo is just as interested in the discussion as I am. Wang has been researching the epigenetic mechanisms of reproductive diseases for years now, but unlike Lin, he does not interact with patients. His curiosity catches me off guard; his excited inquisitiveness seems to surprise even him. He is brimming with questions about patients, parents, and procedures.

What conditions do they face? What treatments do they receive? How often do they survive? He does not ask what causes the conditions because, like Lin, he knows that the answer to this question is multifaceted and largely unknown. Frequent patient and parent interactions seem to have created a kind of ethical commitment to his work, one that surprised Lin himself and that he was not sure his coworkers shared. This came through in a story he told of a night when he was on call.

A couple came to the hospital with their newborn son. After hours of examinations and tests, Lin was finally able to diagnose the child with an intestinal abnormality and rush him to surgery, where physicians performed a simple procedure.

He was proud of his accomplishment, of his correct diagnosis. But he said the moment that truly changed him was when he went to tell the parents the news. On hearing what had occurred, both parents fell at his feet in what Lin interpreted as the ultimate symbol of gratitude.

While he told me this story, Lin himself was moved. He continued reflecting: this kind of interaction made him realize he was happy to be a doctor.

Regardless of the low pay, long hours, and frustrating patient interactions that accompany his career, the profession brings him great joy. The elation that comes from helping others is something he hopes his generation of Chinese students and professionals will also find. Yet in actuality, he thinks his peers are much more concerned with making money and buying a house practically a requirement for anyone hoping to marry, Wang adds.

After a pause, Lin second-guesses himself, giving his peers the benefit of the doubt. Many of them are from the country, he says, so the idea of buying a house in the city is so far-fetched that they feel they must put all their energy into such material pursuits.

Geographic separations, which largely represent economic divisions as well, keep certain graduate students from pursuing careers for more than the financial advantages they might bring, which is seen as their only hope for fulfilling familial duties. Wang agreed: without a career there is no money, without money there is no marriage, without marriage there is no child. Infants diagnosed with HD lack nerve cells in their intestines and are unable to send messages or transmit signals that should move fecal matter through the colon and out the rectum.

The problems we are facing now are tough. In other words, if each of us can be more conscious of environmental issues and willing to take some simple steps to save the Planet, we can make a huge contribution.

Nowadays, with increasing environmental awareness among the public, people around the world are coming together to fight for a greener future, and the effort has achieved great results. As a pioneering member of environmental advocacy community, Better World International is always committed to improve and take care of our surrounding environment, by providing practical tips to its members on the things they can do to live more sustainably and save the Earth.