Gary Cohen
Gary Cohen, 59, has spent his entire career trying to reduce pollution. His Virginia-based not-for-profit, Health Care Without Harm, has been at the forefront of the push to eliminate the use of mercury in medical instruments worldwide and to dramatically reduce the number of medical waste incinerators in America, a leading source of pollution linked to birth defects and cancer.
Cohen’s work was recognized this year by the MacArthur Foundation, which awarded Cohen a “genius grant” of $625,000 paid over the next five years. Cohen intends to use the money to help the health care industry reduce its carbon footprint and to slow climate change.
Cohen got his start as a critic of the chemical industry following the Bhopal disaster, in India in 1984, when gas leaked from a U.S.-owned pesticide plant, killing 4,000 people and poisoning tens of thousands more. He spent ten years as an environmental campaigner and advocate before co-founding Health Care Without Harm in 1996. The idea behind the group was simple: Doctors are supposed to do no harm — yet the medical industry is one of the world’s major polluters. The group works with health care systems, governments, unions and other organizations to reduce pollution and to promote a sustainable health care industry.
He told the Forward: “I very much see my work as tikkun olam, healing the world, and I try to express it as, ‘What does it mean to be a good Jew on a planet in crisis?’”
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.
In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.
At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.
Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we still need 300 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Only 300 more gifts needed by April 30
