Dr Warren Hern is a physician and epidemiologist who has a private medical practice in Boulder, Colorado, specializing in women’s healthcare. But he has studied the issue of the effects of human activities on local and global ecosystems for over fifty years. Among his observations is that the human species seriously affects all ecosystems and habitats in which it is located; and the human species now has all the major characteristics of a malignant process on the planet.

This has come about because humans have culture, and cultural adaptations that have become malignant maladaptations that threaten the survival of not only human species, but many other species on the planet. His new book, Homo Ecophagus, a Deep Diagnosis to Save the Earth, is a presentation of this idea in detail. The comparison with cancer is a diagnosis not an analogy. Homo Ecophagus is Dr. Hern's new name for our species. It means “the man who devours the ecosystem.