Beth Alderman's first professional life was as a medical researcher. The holder of an MD degree from the Pritzker School of Medicine and an MPH from the U. of Washington School of Public Health and Community Medicine, she studied the epidemiology of adverse reproductive outcomes at the U. of Colorado Medical School and risk factors for birth defects at the U. of Washington.

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In the late 1980s, she began to experience insidious symptoms that led to disability labeled as "chronic fatigue" syndrome. She has since studied her own case and the ways in which her beloved profession fails the needs of patients. Years on, she discovered that the cause of her symptoms was chronic exposure to a protean cocktail of ubiquitous toxins that eventually damaged her body.

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This medical revelation converges with what doctors know of escalating epidemics of chronic illness—as well as with what wildlife biologists are learning of the onrushing Sixth Extinction. She now writes transformative texts for readers wishing to imagine and embody a living future for humans, our habitats, and all life on earth.