This archive of investigations, reports and interviews below spans from my work with What Doctors Don’t Tell you through my ‘Ecologist years’ to some of my more recent work (see also my Blogs page) with other publications and from the NYR Natural News website, which I edit and Beyond GM campaign and its associated websites.
It does not include the large body of feature work which I did as a music journalist – work I am equally proud of but which came before the internet made archiving easier!
What Doctors Don’t Tell you re-wrote the book on how journalists should approach health. Instead of rewriting press releases, blindly following the latest fads or relying on rent-a-quote experts, the team immersed itself in the medical journalist that Doctors were – or should have been – reading. These often tell a very different story to the PR that filters through to the media about modern pharmaceuticals. I was a contributing editor at WDDTY for nearly a decade and editor of Proof! – the consumer magazine that grew out of the work we did there.
The Ecologist magazine, founded in 1970, was the world’s oldest and most widely read environment magazine. It was a driving force in major environmental campaigns against climate change, toxic chemicals in household products, rainforest destruction, food additives, genetic modification and much more. Its courageous, in-depth journalism provided early-warning signs for all the environmental challenges we face now and was, for decades, hugely influential in setting the environmental and green political agendas in the UK and elsewhere. The New York Review of Magazines called it “A magazine that changes people’s lives”. I was privileged to be its Health Editor and then Editor for several years before it ceased printing in 2009 and have continued to contribute ad hoc to it’s website.
My interest in a less interventionist, more natural approach to health continues to this day. NYR Natural News is the only alternative health website based in the UK. It has a growing UK and international audience of people who want good information on health alternatives and who want to understand the connections between environment and health. It is also an increasingly powerful voice in environment and GM campaigning, exposing the toxic connections between multinational corporations and political policy and their impact on human well-being.
A new report from A Bigger Conversation shows that while agroecological farmers, working in a values-based system, have an interest in technology that serves those values, they have little interest in technology that does not. Its findings emphasise the importance of a more critical and context-specific approach to technological innovation, which contrasts with ‘hard sell’ of Agriculture 4.0.
Up until a year or so ago, you could be forgiven for thinking that the issue of genetically engineered foods in the UK had faded quietly away. It hadn’t, of course. While consumer scepticism remained a big hurdle to introducing GMOs into the UK food system – and more widely into Europe – genetic engineers were creating new genetic technologies, imagining new ways to apply them to food and farming and, perhaps most importantly, inventing new narratives to position genetic engineering as simply a natural step on the continuum of plant breeding and improvement of our crop species. In the last decade genetic engineering and genetically modified organisms (GMOs) became ‘gene editing’, genetic engineering became ‘biotechnology’ and genetic engineers became ‘biotechnologists’. ‘Sustainable intensification’, ‘nature-based solutions’, ‘precision breeding’ and ‘speed breeding’ have all become euphemisms for genetic engineering.
CRISPR GMOs―They’re Cheap and Fast, But Are They Good?
This year’s Nobel Prize for chemistry was awarded to two scientists―Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer A. Doudna―“who transformed an obscure bacterial immune mechanism, commonly called CRISPR, into a tool that can simply and cheaply edit the genomes of everything from wheat to mosquitoes to humans.” According to the Nobel Prize committee the “genetic scissors” of CRISPR “have […]
Coronavirus – What are the Best Alternatives for Self-Care?
The global spread of coronavirus/COVID-19 has sent researchers and scientists into overdrive to find both treatments and cures. In the meantime, doctors and other practitioners are, to a large extent, improvising. They are employing best-care practices for the very sick in hospital and providing best-guess advice for those with mild symptoms who are self-isolating, and […]
In a hall filled to the rafters with agroecological farmers, a man approaches the podium. Most already know what he’s going to say, but they’ve come to listen anyway—only half believing that what they’ve seen and heard about his assault on farming and farmers could be accurate. George Monbiot is a journalist and author specializing […]
In the first Jurassic Park movie, there is a scene where the head zookeeper reveals that the genetically engineered velociraptors have been systematically testing the electric fences that confine them to find out where they are weakest and where they are strongest. Remarkably prescient for a popular film, it has become, throughout its franchise, a […]
Thanksgiving dinner means only one thing for millions of us: turkey. Of the 100 million turkeys on farms around the U.S., 46 million of them will be eaten on Thanksgiving Day. Americans will consume another 22 million turkeys over the Christmas holidays, according to the National Turkey Federation. When turkeys arrive at our supermarkets, plucked […]
How Climate Change is Changing the Menu – And What We Can Do About It
What will we eat in the future? What was once an rhetorical musing has now become the critical question of our time as scientists grapple with tricky questions about life—and larders—in a climate-changing world. Agriculture is both a key contributor to climate change and one of the sectors most vulnerable to those changes. That fact alone […]
Plant Diversity Leads to More Carbon Stored in The Soil
A new study confirms what most scientists already know, and what proponents of industrial agribusiness either don’t get, or won’t admit: Nature abhors a monoculture. The study suggests that by restoring biodiversity, we can vastly enhance the soil’s potential to store carbon. That’s good news for the climate. And there are co-benefits: healthier, more resilient […]
I am an award-winning campaigner, journalist and author. A former editor of the Ecologist magazine Pat has run campaigns for Paul McCartney’s Meat-Free Monday, Compassion in World Farming (CIWF) and Neal’s Yard Remedies. In 2011, my work leading the campaign, Cows Belong in Fields, won CIWF the Observer Ethical Award for Campaigner of the Year. In 2014 I co-founded the campaigning group, Beyond GM.
I am a qualified psychotherapist and the author more than 40 books for adults and children and I was inducted into Who’s Who in 2014. In addition to my work with Beyond GM, I work occasionally with the film production company Ecostorm. I also currently edit and oversee NYR Natural News – a campaigning natural health website, continue to write in a freelance capacity and make regular public speaking and media appearances.
I have been a trustee of both the Soil Association and the Organic Research Centre in the UK and am currently on the advisory board of GMO Free USA and am a trustee of the investigative media agency, Eyewitness.
To read more about me see here.
Contact Pat
Skype: patti.t16
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Projects, Consultancies and Public Speaking
I am interested in and available for short- and long-term projects/consultancies, and am particularly keen on those that focus on food, sustainability and culture change. I am also an experienced public speaker.
My unique professional experience means I bring a variety of skills to any work I do, including effective and persuasive communication and writing skills, an holistic perspective on sustainability and change, and both intuitive and analytical ability. I am well known in my field and comfortable working in most fora.
Recent projects/consultancies include work with: Stella McCartney ‘Care’ range, Paul McCartney’s Meat Free Monday, Friends of the Earth, Compassion in World Farming, Soil Association, Neal’s Yard Remedies.
Recent public speaking engagements: UK Aware, Oxford University PPE (Philosophy, Politics and Economics) Society, Durham Union Society (Durham University), Bristol Festival of Nature, World Preservation Foundation, Women’s Institute.
I'm a highly experienced journalist and award winning campaigner specialising in environment and alternative health. I'm also the author of several books for adults and children and a qualified psychotherapist.
