GoGreenNation news

Dr. Theo Colborn, who passed away December 14, 2014, was the founder of the endocrine disruption field, connecting the dots among the different health problems seen in wildlife with those seen in humans, tying them to the endocrine system and to chemical pollutants. She organized the first gathering of scientists in 1991, where the term “endocrine disruption” was coined, and the Wingspread Consensus Statement was written. She co-authored the groundbreaking 1996 book Our Stolen Future: Are We Threatening our Fertility, Intelligence, and Survival? A Scientific Detective Story, along with Dianne Dumanoski and Pete Myers, the founder of Environmental Health Sciences (which publishes Environmental Health News). For the 10th anniversary of her passing, we reached out to people who knew her well. We and many others miss her unrelenting passion for raising the scientific curtain on endocrine disruption, for using her eclectic mind in pursuit of all its many manifestations, and not ever giving up, despite dark forces who would rather she’d been quiet.----Fred vom Saal, emeritus professor, University of MissouriOne of Theo’s major skills was her ability to integrate large amounts of information from diverse areas of science. Although her focus was on wildlife, in 1989 Theo read a just published article about findings from studies with litter-bearing laboratory rodents about the life-history reproductive consequences caused by their exquisite sensitivity to very small differences in serum estradiol and testosterone during the vulnerable period of fetal sexual differentiation. The laboratory data was based on whether an animal happened, by chance, to be located in the uterus between female or male littermates, not due to environmental chemicals. This was my work, and it convinced Theo to contact me because she realized this was a part of the puzzle on which she was working. Theo had been studying the disruption of development in wildlife in the Great Lakes region, and she was struck by the similarities in the life-long consequences of fetal exposure to toxic chemicals in the Great Lakes and the life-long consequences in laboratory animals due to their intrauterine position and exposure to very small differences in steroid hormones.This “aha Moment” led Theo to a dramatic departure from the toxicological dogma that “the dose makes the poison” and that only very high exposures to chemical “poisons” were of concern. Instead, in the field of endocrinology the focus was on the exquisite sensitivity to hormones such as estradiol as a result of binding to estrogen receptors at concentrations below a part-per-trillion, with exposure during the fetal period of sexual differentiation being of greatest concern. Her wide-range of reading of the scientific literature led Theo to predict that abnormalities being observed in wildlife could be due to exposure to environmental chemicals that disrupted endocrine function due to chronic exposure to very low doses. This prediction led to Theo organizing the 1991 Wingspread conference on environmental endocrine disrupting chemicals and creation of the new field of environmental endocrine disruption, which has transformed the fields of toxicology as well as endocrinology.----Pete Myers, Environmental Health SciencesIt didn’t take long, after meeting Theo Colborn in 1986, for me to realize she was on to something very big. She had run (yes, run) up to me from the back of a lecture hall where I had been speculating about ways that lipophilic pesticides might be interfering with long-distance migratory orientation in birds. She grabbed me by the shoulders, almost before introducing herself, and proclaimed “Pete, we have to work together.” What a wild and consequential ride that began!At the time I was Senior VP for Science at National Audubon, and I thought it would be simple to create a position for her at Audubon’s DC office where she could benefit from the political knowledge base of staff there and they could help ride the tiger that Theo was creating. Silly me. Theo’s emerging ideas were too bold and threatening for the Audubon DC staff, even with my support. Protecting one’s turf was more important than being at the bleeding edge of a scientific revolution.Fortunately and unexpectedly, another opportunity opened. I was offered the position of director of the W. Alton Jones Foundation, and I agreed to join if I could hire a senior science fellow to work with me on new fronts in environmental science. The foundation board agreed, and I hired Theo.Theo moved down to Charlottesville half-time, commuting between there and Washington, D.C. During those six years, I often couldn’t keep up with her prodigious pace and eclectic mind. But we managed to do some crucial things. The first was to convene the 1991 Wingspread meeting, which was the founding meeting of the field that became known as endocrine disruption. The second was to write Our Stolen Future, published in 1996. We both had full-time jobs and neither of us was a gifted writer, but we solved those problems by recruiting Dianne Dumanoski to the team, and getting a royalty advance that could support Dianne’s research and writing.The subtitle of the book is “Are we threatening our fertility, intelligence and survival?” In 1996 we had more questions than answers but enough knowledge in place that we felt it necessary to confront the public with that profound question. While science never ends, now almost 30 years later we can answer that question with a resounding YES!----Tom Zoeller, Professor Emeritus, University of Massachusetts, AmherstTheo was a giant in the field and that was clear even during her short career. She once asked me to meet her in Washington, D.C. to meet with congressional staffers to talk about ways to address public health and endocrine-disrupting chemicals. She was frail at the time, so she rented a hotel room with a large living room that would be comfortable for staffers to visit away from their offices on Capitol Hill. The fact that these staffers would take the time to come and discuss endocrine-disrupting chemicals with her was testament to her position in the field. One Republican staffer made the point that even Republicans are concerned about autism and would be more active in crafting legislation if we could assure them that we could identify the cause of autism within a five-year period and for $500,000.----Terry Collins, Teresa Heinz Professor of Green Chemistry, Carnegie Mellon UniversityIn the late 1990s, I read Our Stolen Future and realized chemistry was different to anything I had assumed up to that point; endocrine disruption could not be ignored. Then, as a way to get closer to the field, I arranged a series of high profile university lectures at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in which more than a dozen leaders of endocrine disruption science over several years shared their knowledge of the evolving scientific revolution with the CMU community. Theo gave the first lecture on Monday, April 21, 2003, and we became great friends thereafter with extensive correspondence and regular phone conversations. I became her go-to chemist for fracking and many other things and joined her in Washington, D.C. to discuss the importance of endocrine disruption with Congress-people. Theo once told me she considered me one of her two scientific sons along with Lou Guillette, Jr., which is a treasured compliment. Theo, along with other great endocrine disruption leaders, epically changed my teaching, my deep relationship with the field of chemistry that I love so much, and redirected my research passion to developing better methods for removing endocrine-disrupting chemicals from water. ----John A McLachlan, Professor Emeritus, Tulane UniversityI first met Theo when she came to the Research Triangle Park to visit the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences with her concept of a conference to follow up and define the ideas of environmental perturbation of the endocrine system and development first advanced by Rachel Carlson. We discussed participants for the meeting. Her vision was far beyond what was going on in this field of environmental hormones at that time. Theo said we had to consider all animal species. In doing so and being consistent in this idea she advanced the basic sciences of evolutionary and developmental biology that opened inquiries that are still going on.----Carol Kwiatkowski, The Endocrine Disruption ExchangeI had the privilege of working with Theo on a near daily basis for the last seven years of her life — doing my best to soak up almost a century's worth of wisdom. She was sometimes despondent, afraid we had suffered too much damage to our brains and hearts to muster enough intelligence and empathy to fix the problems we had created. But she never stopped trying to do whatever she could to improve things for future generations. I think she would find hope in the work of many of us from The Endocrine Disruption Exchange (TEDX) who continue to not only raise awareness about the harms of endocrine-disrupting chemicals but provide people with concrete recommendations for how to reduce their personal exposure.As Theo would say, "Onward!"

Dr. Theo Colborn, who passed away December 14, 2014, was the founder of the endocrine disruption field, connecting the dots among the different health problems seen in wildlife with those seen in humans, tying them to the endocrine system and to chemical pollutants. She organized the first gathering of scientists in 1991, where the term “endocrine disruption” was coined, and the Wingspread Consensus Statement was written. She co-authored the groundbreaking 1996 book Our Stolen Future: Are We Threatening our Fertility, Intelligence, and Survival? A Scientific Detective Story, along with Dianne Dumanoski and Pete Myers, the founder of Environmental Health Sciences (which publishes Environmental Health News). For the 10th anniversary of her passing, we reached out to people who knew her well. We and many others miss her unrelenting passion for raising the scientific curtain on endocrine disruption, for using her eclectic mind in pursuit of all its many manifestations, and not ever giving up, despite dark forces who would rather she’d been quiet.----Fred vom Saal, emeritus professor, University of MissouriOne of Theo’s major skills was her ability to integrate large amounts of information from diverse areas of science. Although her focus was on wildlife, in 1989 Theo read a just published article about findings from studies with litter-bearing laboratory rodents about the life-history reproductive consequences caused by their exquisite sensitivity to very small differences in serum estradiol and testosterone during the vulnerable period of fetal sexual differentiation. The laboratory data was based on whether an animal happened, by chance, to be located in the uterus between female or male littermates, not due to environmental chemicals. This was my work, and it convinced Theo to contact me because she realized this was a part of the puzzle on which she was working. Theo had been studying the disruption of development in wildlife in the Great Lakes region, and she was struck by the similarities in the life-long consequences of fetal exposure to toxic chemicals in the Great Lakes and the life-long consequences in laboratory animals due to their intrauterine position and exposure to very small differences in steroid hormones.This “aha Moment” led Theo to a dramatic departure from the toxicological dogma that “the dose makes the poison” and that only very high exposures to chemical “poisons” were of concern. Instead, in the field of endocrinology the focus was on the exquisite sensitivity to hormones such as estradiol as a result of binding to estrogen receptors at concentrations below a part-per-trillion, with exposure during the fetal period of sexual differentiation being of greatest concern. Her wide-range of reading of the scientific literature led Theo to predict that abnormalities being observed in wildlife could be due to exposure to environmental chemicals that disrupted endocrine function due to chronic exposure to very low doses. This prediction led to Theo organizing the 1991 Wingspread conference on environmental endocrine disrupting chemicals and creation of the new field of environmental endocrine disruption, which has transformed the fields of toxicology as well as endocrinology.----Pete Myers, Environmental Health SciencesIt didn’t take long, after meeting Theo Colborn in 1986, for me to realize she was on to something very big. She had run (yes, run) up to me from the back of a lecture hall where I had been speculating about ways that lipophilic pesticides might be interfering with long-distance migratory orientation in birds. She grabbed me by the shoulders, almost before introducing herself, and proclaimed “Pete, we have to work together.” What a wild and consequential ride that began!At the time I was Senior VP for Science at National Audubon, and I thought it would be simple to create a position for her at Audubon’s DC office where she could benefit from the political knowledge base of staff there and they could help ride the tiger that Theo was creating. Silly me. Theo’s emerging ideas were too bold and threatening for the Audubon DC staff, even with my support. Protecting one’s turf was more important than being at the bleeding edge of a scientific revolution.Fortunately and unexpectedly, another opportunity opened. I was offered the position of director of the W. Alton Jones Foundation, and I agreed to join if I could hire a senior science fellow to work with me on new fronts in environmental science. The foundation board agreed, and I hired Theo.Theo moved down to Charlottesville half-time, commuting between there and Washington, D.C. During those six years, I often couldn’t keep up with her prodigious pace and eclectic mind. But we managed to do some crucial things. The first was to convene the 1991 Wingspread meeting, which was the founding meeting of the field that became known as endocrine disruption. The second was to write Our Stolen Future, published in 1996. We both had full-time jobs and neither of us was a gifted writer, but we solved those problems by recruiting Dianne Dumanoski to the team, and getting a royalty advance that could support Dianne’s research and writing.The subtitle of the book is “Are we threatening our fertility, intelligence and survival?” In 1996 we had more questions than answers but enough knowledge in place that we felt it necessary to confront the public with that profound question. While science never ends, now almost 30 years later we can answer that question with a resounding YES!----Tom Zoeller, Professor Emeritus, University of Massachusetts, AmherstTheo was a giant in the field and that was clear even during her short career. She once asked me to meet her in Washington, D.C. to meet with congressional staffers to talk about ways to address public health and endocrine-disrupting chemicals. She was frail at the time, so she rented a hotel room with a large living room that would be comfortable for staffers to visit away from their offices on Capitol Hill. The fact that these staffers would take the time to come and discuss endocrine-disrupting chemicals with her was testament to her position in the field. One Republican staffer made the point that even Republicans are concerned about autism and would be more active in crafting legislation if we could assure them that we could identify the cause of autism within a five-year period and for $500,000.----Terry Collins, Teresa Heinz Professor of Green Chemistry, Carnegie Mellon UniversityIn the late 1990s, I read Our Stolen Future and realized chemistry was different to anything I had assumed up to that point; endocrine disruption could not be ignored. Then, as a way to get closer to the field, I arranged a series of high profile university lectures at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in which more than a dozen leaders of endocrine disruption science over several years shared their knowledge of the evolving scientific revolution with the CMU community. Theo gave the first lecture on Monday, April 21, 2003, and we became great friends thereafter with extensive correspondence and regular phone conversations. I became her go-to chemist for fracking and many other things and joined her in Washington, D.C. to discuss the importance of endocrine disruption with Congress-people. Theo once told me she considered me one of her two scientific sons along with Lou Guillette, Jr., which is a treasured compliment. Theo, along with other great endocrine disruption leaders, epically changed my teaching, my deep relationship with the field of chemistry that I love so much, and redirected my research passion to developing better methods for removing endocrine-disrupting chemicals from water. ----John A McLachlan, Professor Emeritus, Tulane UniversityI first met Theo when she came to the Research Triangle Park to visit the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences with her concept of a conference to follow up and define the ideas of environmental perturbation of the endocrine system and development first advanced by Rachel Carlson. We discussed participants for the meeting. Her vision was far beyond what was going on in this field of environmental hormones at that time. Theo said we had to consider all animal species. In doing so and being consistent in this idea she advanced the basic sciences of evolutionary and developmental biology that opened inquiries that are still going on.----Carol Kwiatkowski, The Endocrine Disruption ExchangeI had the privilege of working with Theo on a near daily basis for the last seven years of her life — doing my best to soak up almost a century's worth of wisdom. She was sometimes despondent, afraid we had suffered too much damage to our brains and hearts to muster enough intelligence and empathy to fix the problems we had created. But she never stopped trying to do whatever she could to improve things for future generations. I think she would find hope in the work of many of us from The Endocrine Disruption Exchange (TEDX) who continue to not only raise awareness about the harms of endocrine-disrupting chemicals but provide people with concrete recommendations for how to reduce their personal exposure.As Theo would say, "Onward!"