My Trip to Washington for the Global Conservation Act
I traveled to Washington D.C. this past week to voice my support to my congressional representatives about the Global Conservation Act, a bill recently introduced to the House. I met with an aide for Congressman Charlie Rangel and staffers for Senator Gillibrand. I also had a radio interview and met a lot of great people who also support the bill.
After the event in Washington the Wildlife Conservation Society asked me to give a short speech before their 5k run at the Bronx Zoo. I came and told my story to the 5,000 people attending the great event. The weather was beautiful and the Bronx Zoo is incredible.
The story I tell is about having, and beating, cancer using chemotherapy drugs that were derived from nature. The ABVD chemo I received has 4 different drugs, at least 3 of which were discovered in nature. Adriamycin was found in soil microbes in Spain, Bleomycin comes from toxic bacteria, and Vinblastine was first found in the Rosy Periwinkel flower, native to Madagascar. I met people this last week that had been saved by the most amazing things – the spit from gila monsters…venon from black vipers…bark from trees in China. Nature is an amazing pharmacy.
It might sound self-interested, and maybe it is, but one of the reasons we need to save natural areas around the world is so we can save ourselves. There are certain to be valuable medicines in the rain forests that we are cutting down. Who knows what we’ll find if we just save them long enough to look.
I feel invested in this argument for many reasons, not the least of which is that cancer may come back. Survivors of the chemotherapy I was treated with are at an increased risk of developing secondary cancers several decades after the treatments. If that happens I hope that we’ve found a miracle drug that makes chemotherapy look barbaric, and that I won’t have to go through the same ordeal I did the first time in order to get better.
There is a lot of information on this topic at the website for the Global Conservation Act.
