ABSTRACT

Home Ecophagus by Warren M. Hern is a wide-ranging look at the major problems for the survival of not just the human species, but all other species on  Earth due to human activities over the past tens of thousands years. The title of the book indicates Hern’s new name for the human species: "The man who devours the ecosystem." Over the course of its evolution, Hern observes, humans have evolved cultures and adaptations that have now become malignant and that the human species, at the global level, has all the major characteristics of a malignant neoplasm – converting all plant, animal, organic, and inorganic material into human biomass or its adaptive adjuncts and support systems. Hern contends that this process is incompatible with continued survival of the human species and most other species on the planet, offering a diagnosis and prognosis of the current environmental impasse.

chapter |4 pages

Introduction

part One|76 pages

Overview – what's the problem?

chapter 1|5 pages

“Save that. We might need it someday”

chapter 2|4 pages

Public health and politics in West Africa

chapter 3|10 pages

Medical school and the Amazon

“You are very keen in your diagnosis”

chapter 4|4 pages

Brazil, Chile, and abortion

chapter 5|9 pages

Public health; research; and revelation

chapter 6|6 pages

A new calling

chapter 7|9 pages

Threat to the Holy Cross Wilderness

chapter 8|4 pages

Family planning, Amazon style

chapter 9|12 pages

“You may not ask that question”

part Two|177 pages

Manifestations of malignancy

chapter 11|13 pages

What the fractal is this?

chapter 13|35 pages

Effects of malignant human activity on small, local ecosystems

“It's only eels!”

chapter 14|18 pages

Human contact and island ecosystems

chapter 17|19 pages

The oceans

chapter 18|15 pages

Toxic trash, oncometabolites, and cow farts

chapter 19|18 pages

Effects of human activity on biodiversity

part Three|33 pages

Analysis and policy choices

chapter 21|7 pages

Humans as cancer

Metaphor, model, analogy, hypothesis, or diagnosis?

chapter 22|3 pages

Human activities and malignant entropy

chapter 23|4 pages

Human culture and the ecophagic imperative

chapter 25|12 pages

“We have met the enemy, and he is us”

chapter |4 pages

Epilogue

Great bringer of death to paradise