You can’t be healthy in a sick we

Eugene Kaellis
m Contributing Columnist

| NEWS that the major
industrial countries,
including Canada, are
retreating from com-
mitments to reduce
greenhouse emissions
m and that the cleanup |
| of the Great Lakes is
m languishing brought
gto mind the Gaia
‘Hypothesis.

Developed by an English
‘biologist by the last name of
Loveluck, ir is based on
what many scientists believe
is the most fundamental
principle in the universe —
systems tend to alleviate the
stress applied to them.
’. For example, through a
complex endocrine system
‘we tend to keep our blood
sugar levels fairly constant in
“spite of eating or fasting.
Our blood pressure
‘remains more or less stable
2 whether we’re standing or
lying down.

Loveluck treats the Earth
as if it too were a living
organism, warding off —.
threats to its health and
well-being by acting protec-
tively.

Consider cancer.

In spite of all the billions
expended on research and
treatment, if cancer Were an
infectious disease, today it
would be classified as an epi-
demic.

Until AIDS came along,
no other illness in our soci-
ety aroused as much fear.

By contrast, death from a
heart attack or stroke
seemed blessed. In spite of
the use of analgesics, people
dread cancer because of the
often relentless pain and
wasting it causes.

In’ countries without uni-

versal health insurance, can-
cer can not only devastate its
victims and their near ones
emotionally, it can destroy
them financially.

Yet, with all che horror it
evokes, cancer has an unde-
niably poctic- metaphoric
aspect.

Each of its victims, in a
part of his or her body, per-
sonally experiences the
effects of unlimited growth,
just like the Earth. It’s as if
Mother Nature, who can
never be mocked for too
long, were saying —~ “Your
politicians and economists
keep chattering about
growth. [am feverish, yet
some insist that there ‘is no
global warming. My circula-
tory system is clogged with
your industrial and munici-
pal debris, yet you go on
dumping into my arteries.

“[ have to breathe foul
air, yet you continue to
belzh noxious vapors into
the armosphere. In short,
you plunder and spoil parts
of my body. Now, with can-
cer, you feel within your-
selves what I feel within

myself. Growth you want!
Growth you will get!”

There is an uncon-
scionable and unprecedented
proliferation of goods and
services of sundry degrees of
irzclevance, teiviality, ‘vulgati-
ty, noxiousness, and toxicity.
Oddities and commodities
of all shapes and materials
clutter our landscape, befoul
the air, poison the soil, and
waste resources. We have
created an ecological cancer.

If yoga is a way to
achieve union with nature,
then cancer has become the
yoga of the 20th century.

It is through cancer that
we conimune with a sick and
suffering environment.

And, just as cancer cells
lose their typical characteris-
tics and become wild and
undifferentiated, so through
corporate mergers and
acquisitions, the sole
remaining, characteristic | eft

‘in any business is its abi!

to grow and make money.
A company that used to
be in petroicum, now owns
book publishers, newspa-
pers, a sports team, radio

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Sunday, November 23, 1997 -- North Shore News — 17

and television stations. It
sells soft driaks, and devel-
ops mining subsidiaries.
There is no business other
than the business of profit.

Polluting industries gen-
erate de-polluting industries.
Organized crime results in a
vast police-court-penal net-
work, Systemic poverty
occasions a huge “misery
industry.”

Cancer has brought into
being a gargantuan medical-
pharmaceutical-charities-
research industry which may
be keeping more people
alive chan it kills.

rid

If cancer is the metaphor
for unlimited growth, per-
haps heart disease indicates a
loss of compassion, and
stroke, a blocking out of
parts or our intellect and our
ability to act.

Maybe we ought to stop
and listen to what Mother
Nature is trying to cell us —
you cannot be healthy ina
sick environment.

— Eugene Kaellis is the
communications director for
the Burnaby Multicultural
Society.

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