Take time out to contemplate our modern world

national | environment | opinion/analysis Wednesday February 22, 2006 21:08 by Kathy Sinnott

My father is a calm man, a good thing in a Dad. In the very few arguments I have had with him in my life, he only got upset once. The disagreement was about health and disease. Advancing health and curing disease had been his life's work. He had gratefully watched the dminishing of the old contagious diseases and here I was telling him they were being replaced by chronic disorders and new contagious diseases. But my Dad is an honest and inquiring man and he accepted my challenge. One evening he and my mother systematically reviewed our family medical history.

They noted the health of their parents, uncles and aunts, their brothers and sisters and first cousins, then their children and nieces and nephews, the grandchildren, grand-nieces and nephews and finally the great-grand generation. My father was well placed to do this as he had been the family doctor to all over 50 years.

A gall bladder problem, bowel cancer, colour blindness and glaucoma were evident in each generation. But where did the asthma, allergies, early onset diabetes, autistic spectrum disorders and learning disabilities, the bipolar and the endemic ear and chest infections that plagued the grand and great-grand generation come from? By the end of the evening my father was convinced that something had changed. That was ten years ago. Something had changed or rather many things had changed and people were suffering. We have to ask questions. What has happened? Why has it happened? What can we do?

What has happened? We have introduced all manner of chemicals, medicines, waste, metals, ratioactive materials, microwaves, etc, into our air, water, soil, food and directly into our bodies. In addition we have introduced novel treatments and technologies - many of these give us benefits but they also can have a price. We have done this at a rate and in a density that makes it almost impossible to know what hit us. We sometimes throw away nature's rule book and make an alternative up for profit and convenience.

Why is it happening? The quick and obvious answer is profit. We add sugar to sell food. We use mercury in order to stockpile for mass consumption. We use more toxic chemicals rather than safer alternatives to save costs. We dump because it is a quick solution and time is money. The more complete answer is power. We globalise markets, energy, food production, services and defence to ensure that we stay on top.

But we must ask why it is happening at a deeper level. An American lady heard me talk about GM crops. She went to an internet cafe that evening to look up the subject. She was astounded. She had never heard of genetic modification before. But being and Evangelical Christian, she instantly knew that they couldn't be a good idea. Why? Because she belives in a God, a Creator. She believes in Intelligent Design. I also believe in a Creator. God created the beautiful, finely balanced universe around and in us. When I study something like the way a single cell generates energy, I see God's nature in its simplicity. His wisdom in its perfectly functional complexity, and His loving mercy in the fact that within each cell there is a main energy system and a back up mechanism just in case.

But what happens when we look at the cell's energy system and we see it as merely a product of chance and time? Then we replace chance with innovation and time with technology.

What can we do? It would be easy to say eat oganic goods, filter water and recycle - and of course these are good to do and helpful, but at this stage they cannot turn the tide. There is nowhere exempt from dioxins and mercury. Nature does not give us marks for effort or credit for good intentions. So we do our best not just for ourselves but for those around us locally and globally and hope it helps. We will mend our destructive relationship with the environment and when we understand how that relationship deteriorated and start making amends. Until then our results will be diappointing.

We can and we must question the supremacy of profit and power over nature. We must realise once and for all that nature has rules and that the saying 'God always forgives. Man sometimes forgives, but nature never forgives.'