What on earth do invasive species have to do with First Opinion?

Here's an update on this week's First Opinion essays and the 100th episode of the First Opinion Podcast.

June 2, 2024 Check out STAT+

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By Patrick Skerrett Editor, First Opinion

While out for a stroll yesterday morning to circumnavigate one of the last remaining working farms within the city limits of Boston, I got to thinking about invasive species — plants, animals, and microbes that didn't originally exist in North America but that have established themselves here — because of the exuberant groves of Japanese knotweed lining the verge. Daniel Mason's lyrical book, North Country, offers a description of how plants that many of us now think of as natives quietly slipped into this continent from afar and flourished. If you think about it, humans are an invasive species in North America, having arrived here maybe 13,000 years ago, though no one really knows how or when. A later "invasion" happened after 1492, when Europeans began streaming westward. Each of these waves were disruptive, to use a neutral term. The earliest Americans have been implicated in decimating the massive herds of giant mammals that had been living on the continent. A visit to the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington D.C. shows that European settlers did much the same to the people who came here before them. What does this have to do with First Opinion? Like ecosystems, societies and business are molded by new influences and constant change, from the emergence of the Covid-19 pandemic to how pregnant people trying hard to fight addiction are treated. A knee-jerk reaction is often to resist what's new. But as the slow-but-steady march of invasive species across the U.S. suggests, a better plan is to accept that change is happening and look for ways to accept or address it. 'Nuff said. On a cheerier note, we published the 100th episode of the First Opinion Podcast this week, a conversation I had with two young caregivers who draw attention to this unrecognized but important population.

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