Resources for Teachers and Students
Prepare: Theo Colborn is a former Senior Fellow
with the World Wildlife Fund, where she specialized in freshwater
ecology, toxicology, and endocrine disrupters found in aquatic
ecosystems. She is currently a professor of Zoology at the
University of Florida, where she also holds an appointment
as Pew Fellow in Marine Conservation. For more information
on Colborn, please visit her biography
and a list of her publications.
Read:
Theo Colborn wrote an
original essay for the Architects of Peace project.
In it, she describes the intricate balance of the endocrine
system, and the dangers that synthetic chemicals pose to
"the inner environment."
Explore: Theo Colborn's most celebrated book is
called Our
Stolen Future, co-written with Dianne Dumanoski and
John Peterson Myers. This book has so radically altered
our notions of "safe chemicals," and has engendered
so much further study, that it now has its own website,
with extensive information on the new science being conducted
as a result of the book's initial publication.
Write: In her Architects of Peace essay, Theo Colborn
makes the provocative statement, "Peace begins in the
womb." She complains that as a result of all our scientific
interest in outer space, we seem to have forgotten the inner
space of the womb. Does peace really begin in the womb?
Write a two-to-three page imaginative reflection on the
metaphor of inner space, attempting, if possible, to expand
upon Colborn's image of the womb as the place of origin
of peace.
Extend: The World
Wildlife Fund has long been concerned that effective
conservation efforts require a solid scientific foundation.
For this reason, they founded the Conservation Science Program
(CSP) in 1990 to advance biodiversity conservation through
the development of innovative science. Summaries of a great
deal of the research from this program are available to
the public through their website.
Additional Resource: The Public Broadcast System
(PBS) produced an interview with Theo Colborn titled "Fooling
With Nature." A transcript of this interview, as
well as related special reports, can be found on their website.
Biography of Theo
Colborn