"The Earth does not belong to us, we belong to the Earth.  What we do to the Earth, we do to ourselves."  As far as I'm concerned, no one has ever put it better than Chief Seattle.  The scientists from various fields who are now touting the reality of interdependence as if they invented it are mere johnny-come-latelys.  Worse, they never seem to notice that scientific ways of thinking and doing--and science's insistence that there are no other valid ways of knowing about the world--bear great responsibility for alienating so many of us from our ancestral wisdom and enabling us to adopt ways of life that cause such harm to all.

But that's a different article, isn't it?  We're talking about fish oils here.  Yeah, well, fish oils are great for much of what ails us stressed-out, alienated, polluted humans: heart disease, allergies, diabetes, mood disorders, and many other complaints.  Fish oils are one of the few supplements I take regularly myself and recommend to everyone.  Taking them causes me a certain amount of conflict, though.  Fish of all species are in trouble due to overfishing, climate change, and our human habit of dumping every kind of garbage we want to disappear into the oceans.  On top of that, fish, like us, are pretty high on the food chain, so they tend to concentrate all the toxins that we put into the air, soils, and waters.  In this case, fish are concentrating polychlorinated biphenyls, nasty chemicals involved in the creation of plastics and banned even in the U.S. 30 years ago.  PCBs are known carcinogens.  Not what you want to be slugging down with your morning spoonful of cod liver oil.

For a nice brief summary of which fish oils are likely to be contaminated, read my college classmate and smart naturopath Orna Isakson's article here.  And the next time you buy or take fish oils, ask the fish--and Mother Earth--for forgiveness for our blindness, and thank them for being willing to help us out anyway.