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HEALTH AND THE GLOBAL ENVIRONMENT Center Initiates World Effort Linking Biodiversity to Human Health Championing biodiversity from a doctor's perspective, Eric Chivian, director of the Center for Health and the Global Environment at HMS, has secured a commitment from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) to form an international scientific effort documenting the impact of species loss and ecosystem disruption on human health. The collaboration, to be led by Chivian, was officially launched in December at WHO headquarters in Geneva. The project, titled "Biodiversity: Its Importance to Human Health," is to be implemented over a three-year period and culminate in the most comprehensive report yet about the ways biodiversity is known to affect human health, along with an assessment of policy options. Information gathered also will be included as a chapter on human health and biodiversity in another major project sponsored by the U.N., the Millennium Assessment, designed to gauge the current status of the world's ecosystems. Eric Chivian is spearheading a collaboration with the World Health Organization and the U.N. to document the effect of biodiversity on human health. Chivian's goal is to establish a sustainable framework so the report can be repeated at five-year intervals. The information provided would be used to inform policy decisions and public action. Although interest in understanding the link between human health and global environmental change has been growing since the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, no attempt has previously been made to establish a regular, coordinated process to rigorously analyze this issue in the context of biodiversity loss. Medical pharmaceuticals and research both rely heavily on other species, Chivian says. Taxol, for example, one of the most promising medications to treat breast and ovarian cancer, is derived from the once threatened Pacific yew tree. Overfishing continues to endanger some shark species that are valued for the insight they provide in the study of immune function. Furthermore, ecosystem disruption may lead to the emergence of some infectious diseases. Careful studies, for example, have been able to link the 1993 hantavirus outbreak in the southwestern U.S. to extreme weather that increased local populations of the virus-carrying deer mouse. Though still in the planning stages, the project has already had an impact. It led directly to the inclusion of the topic biodiversity and human health in a recent seminal agreement between the WHO and UNEP to collaborate on environmental health issues. The center also has been invited to submit its findings to the Convention on Biological Diversity, the U.N. effort organized to set international policy for the protection and preservation of species and habitats around the world. "One of the greatest problems we face," Chivian says, "is that most people still see themselves as separate from the environment and therefore are not motivated enough to do what is necessary to preserve it." —Catherine Chu