Phoenix Zones

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Phoenix Zones

Phoenix Zones: Where Strength Is Born and Resilience Lives

FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS: Few things get our compassion flowing like the sight of suffering. But our response is often shaped by our ability to empathize with others. Some people respond to the suffering of only humans or to one person’s plight more than another’s. Others react more strongly to the suffering of an animal. These divergent realities can be troubling—but they are also a reminder that trauma and suffering are endured by all beings, and we can learn lessons about their aftermath, even across species.

With Phoenix Zones, Dr. Hope Ferdowsian shows us how. Ferdowsian has spent years traveling the world to work with people and animals who have endured trauma—war, abuse, displacement. Here, she combines compelling stories of survivors with the latest science on resilience to help us understand the link between violence against people and animals and the biological foundations of recovery, peace, and hope. Taking us to the sanctuaries that give the book its title, she reveals how the injured can heal and thrive if we attend to key principles: respect for liberty and sovereignty, a commitment to love and tolerance, the promotion of justice, and a fundamental belief that each individual possesses dignity. Courageous tales show us how: stories of combat veterans and wolves recovering together at a California refuge, Congolese women thriving in one of the most dangerous places on earth, abused chimpanzees finding peace in a Washington sanctuary, and refugees seeking care at Ferdowsian’s own medical clinic.

These are not easy stories. Suffering is real, and recovery is hard. But resilience is real, too, and Phoenix Zones shows how we can foster it. It reveals how both people and animals deserve a chance to live up to their full potential—and how such a view could inspire solutions to some of the greatest challenges of our time.

 

 

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING ABOUT PHOENIX ZONES

“This is a gem of a book. Using real stories about real people, Phoenix Zones delivers a powerful message about how we may confront, understand, and overcome adversity and make the world a better place for ourselves and the other animals that we share it with. It radiates light and offers hope in these dark and dangerous times.”—David Livingstone Smith, author of Less Than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave, and Exterminate Others

“Human and nonhuman animal rights activist Dr. Hope Ferdowsian has witnessed the horrific effects of brutality directed at both. Phoenix Zones are sanctuaries throughout the earth that extraordinary people have created to allow these dignified human and nonhuman victims to reclaim their lives. An acute observer of all animals, human and nonhuman, Hope’s fine prose and deftly drawn portraits allow us to understand how we can not only support these Phoenix Zones but also create a world in which they become obsolete.”—Steven Wise, president of the Nonhuman Rights Project

“Hope Ferdowsian has spent a lifetime serving the most vulnerable and abused members of our societies; my own career took me to postrevolutionary Libya, where our mission statement was encapsulated in the phrase ‘to support the Libyan people in rebuilding a secure society where they can love and work with dignity.’ Dr. Ferdowsian’s book Phoenix Zones not only offers a positive vision of human renewal following horrific experiences but also makes a compelling case that the true measure of our ethical standards is the degree of justice and sovereignty accorded the most defenseless members of our societies, including sentient, nonhuman animals as well as women and children. Ferdowsian suggests the only way to mitigate the abusive treatment of human beings—which she convincingly argues often follows models of animal exploitation—is the development of an empathic culture that recognizes the importance of according dignity, with concomitant protections, to all these groups. Her book is particularly timely in the current political atmosphere.”—Deborah K. Jones, US Ambassador to Libya (2013–15) and Kuwait (2008–11), retired

“Ferdowsian is at her best when she brings together concrete steps for change with inspiring rhetoric. She shows us what is possible: working from within a principled framework, we may rethink our connection with others (human and animal) and normalize the type of compassion that is currently exceptional.”—Barbara J. King, The Times Literary Supplement

“Ferdowsian’s voice echoes those of ethologist and compassionate conservationist Jane Goodall, whose pioneering scientific work documented the complex lives of other animals, and Paul Farmer, the anthropologist and physician who changed public health interventions by conceptualizing structural violence to describe the way in which societal structures create and perpetuate morbidity and mortality for marginalized individuals.”—Kate Cummings, Minding Nature

“Phoenix Zones: Where Strength Is Born and Resilience Lives by Hope Ferdowsian, MD, is among the many compassionate, powerful, inspiring books the world needs now….Published in 2018, Phoenix Zones feels more relevant than ever, addressing issues that include pandemics and social justice; it is also highly accessible, its ideas portrayed with empathy and compassion…”—Midge Raymond, EcoLit Books

A discussion guide is available through The University of Chicago Press.


Available now at your local bookstore and also at:

 

Selected Talks & Appearances

  • Address to the British Parliament on Ethical and Public Health Concerns About Fur Farming (London, UK, March 2025)
  • Toward Universal Rights, Health & Justice: Centering People, Animals & the Planet, Texas Law School (Austin, TX, February 2025)
  • Bridging Movements: Pakistan’s First Animal and Environmental Rights Conference (Lahore, Pakistan, January 2025)
  • Ready Living Podcast with Andrea Weckerle (Season 1, Episode 12, October 2024)
  • Walk On Podcast with Michael Mills (Season 2, Episode 4, September 2024)
  • The Phoenix Effect: A Conversation about Hope, Resilience and Creating a Better World, New Roots Institute Leadership Academy (Los Angeles, CA, August 2024)
  • Toward a National Commission on Research Ethics: Advancements in Medicine, Science, and the Law, Congressional Briefing (Washington, DC, March 2024)
  • Treating Global Crises with the Seriousness They Deserve: Toward More Inclusive Social, Economic, and Legal Frameworks, Lewis & Clark Law School (Portland, OR, March 2024)
  • The Role of Civil Society in Multilateral Actions in Addressing the Triple Planetary Crisis, UN Environment Assembly (Nairobi, Kenya, February 2024)
  • Meeting the Health Needs of Refugees, Asylum Seekers, and Trafficked Individuals, New Mexico Department of Health (Albuquerque, NM, November 2023)
  • Starting from Principles: Human and Animal Research Ethics, University of New Mexico Ethics Grand Rounds (Albuquerque, NM, November 2023)
  • A Rights-Based Approach to a New Era for Healthcare: Justice in Research, Medicine, and Public Health, Center for Bioethics and Humanities and Center for Interprofessional Practice and Education, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus (Denver, CO, November 2023)
  • The Promise of One Health, Gritstone bio (Emeryville, CA, September 2023)
  • Industrial Animal Agriculture in the US and China, US-Asia Partnerships for Environmental Law, Vermont Law and Graduate School (South Royalton, VT, June 2023)
  • Preventing the Next Pandemic Through a Just One Health Approach, University of New Mexico School of Medicine Grand Rounds and Rural and Urban Underserved Program (Albuquerque, NM, December 2022 and May 2023)
  • Preventing the Next Pandemic, Consortium of Universities for Global Health (Washington, DC, April 2023)
  • Reshaping the Anthropocene: From Dominance to Justice, Equity, and Inclusion, The George Washington University Law School (Washington, DC, March 2023)
  • Transforming Medical Research, American Bar Association (NY, NY, December 2022)
  • Why We Need a Just One Health Approach to Advance the Right to Health, Barry Commoner Center for Health and the Environment (NY, NY, December 2022)
  • Address to UN Member States on The Nexus: Animal Welfare, the Environment, and Sustainable Development (Gaborone, Botswana, December 2022)
  • Children Are Not Silos: A Rights-based Approach to Advance Health and Justice, Kempe International Virtual Conference (Denver, CO, October 2022)
  • Powerful Support for #OneHealth, Public Service Announcement (July 2022)
  • Preparations for the 2021 UN High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (July 2021)
  • Meeting the Healthcare Needs of Refugees and Asylum Seekers, Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science Grand Rounds (Chicago, IL, February 2021)
  • ICM Bioethics (Paris, France, February 2020)
  • Impact Fashion (Los Angeles, CA, September 2020)
  • “SOME PEOPLE” (Every)Body Exhibition (Chicago, IL, 2019)
  • North American Refugee Health Conference (Toronto, Canada, 2019)
  • International Summit on Preventing, Assessing & Treating Trauma Across the Lifespan (Honolulu, HI, 2019)
  • Teaching Prevention 2019 (Cleveland, OH, 2019)
  • Harvard Coop (Cambridge, MA, 2018)
  • DC Academy of Medicine (Washington, DC, 2018)
  • The Elliott Bay Book Company (Seattle, WA, 2018)
  • Garcia Street Books (Santa Fe, NM, 2018)
  • Animal Politics: Justice, Power, and the State (Leusden, The Netherlands, 2016)
  • The Courage to Fight Violence Against Women, American University (Washington, DC, 2016)
  • Food, Water, People, and Animals, Native Educators (Santa Fe, NM, 2016)
  • Evaluating Immigrant Survivors of Torture and Ill Treatment (Washington, DC, 2016)
  • Nonhuman Primates in Research: Legal and Ethical Considerations, Harvard University (Cambridge, MA, 2015)
  • DC Environmental Film Festival: See No Evil (Washington, DC, 2015)
  • Public Responsibility in Medicine and Research (Baltimore, MD, 2013)
  • Minding Animals (Utrecht, Netherlands, 2012)
  • University of Nairobi College of Medicine and Veterinary Medicine (Nairobi, Kenya, 2011)
  • World Congress of Bioethics (Singapore, 2010)
  • Yale University Interdiscliplinary Center for Bioethics (New Haven, CT, 2009)
  • National Academy of Sciences (Washington, DC, 2007)
  • American Public Health Association (Washington, DC, 2007)
  • Tri-Caucus Summit, Capitol Hill (Washington, DC, 2006)

Selected Articles, Op-eds & Essays

  • Just One Health. Edgar Concise Encyclopedia of Animal Law. Forthcoming, June 2025.
  • The bird flu is uncontrolled, and it keeps showing up in the scariest places. MSNBC, April 30, 2024.
  • How One Health instrumentalizes nonhuman animals. AMA Journal of Ethics, February 1, 2024.
  • Now is not the time to loosen child labor regulations – Especially in dangerous industries. The Austin Chronicle, July 21, 2023.
  • 60 years later, ‘Silent Spring’ still holds lessons for keeping the planet, and ourselves, healthy, Harvard Public Health Magazine, January 25, 2023.
  • Primates in medical research: A matter of convenience, not sound science. Hastings Bioethics Forum, July 8, 2022.
  • US high-level office for children is critical for children’s rights. Health and Human Rights Journal, March 10, 2022.
  • Toward an anti-maleficent research agenda, Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics, January 20, 2022.
  • Today, on Human Rights Day, the US must abolish child marriage, Marie Claire, December 10, 2021.
  • Ecological justice and the right to health, Health and Human Rights Journal, December 9, 2021.
  • Ethics in animal research, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine Issues in Technology, December 8, 2021.
  • Stop torturing animals in the name of science, Scientific American, September 16, 2021.
  • Re-imagining the asylum system: Recommendations from asylum medicine experts. Health Affairs, May 12, 2021.
  • Challenging the way we produce and consume food. American College of Preventive Medicine, May 18, 2020.
  • Movement—animal and human—key to pandemics. Albuquerque Journal, March 27, 2020.
  • Animals deserve research protections people get. Albuquerque Journal, November 3, 2019.
  • A Belmont Report for animals? Cambridge Quarterly for Healthcare Ethics, October 2019.
  • Asylum medicine: Standard and best practices. Health and Human Rights Journal, May 2019.
  • The Phoenix Effect: Turning vulnerability into resilience. Literary AMWA, Winter 2018-2019.
  • Process matters to sexual violence survivors. The Chicago Blog, September 25, 2018.
  • When it comes to rape myths, the US is no better than conflict zones. Huffington Post, June 28, 2016.
  • Reflections from a human rights doctor. Psychology Today, March 19, 2016.
  • Prosecuting sexual violence in conflict: A medical approach. Angle Journal, January 20, 2016.
  • Parallels in sources of trauma, pain, distress, and suffering in humans and nonhuman animals. Journal of Trauma and Dissociation. Volume 13, Issue 4, January, 2012.
  • Human and animal research guidelines: Aligning ethical constructs with new scientific developments. Bioethics, Volume 25, Issue 8, September, 2011.
  • Animal research: Why we need alternatives. The Chronicle of Higher Education, November 7, 2010.

Moral Conviction and Civility Can Coexist. In Fact, They Must.

August 27, 2018 by Hope Ferdowsian

As is well known by now, over the weekend, Senator John McCain died of brain cancer. Since his death, people around the world have expressed their respect for and gratitude to the man who survived more than five years of imprisonment and torture while he was a prisoner of war in Vietnam. When given the chance to leave his fellow prisoners of war behind, he did not. Since his death, we’ve also learned more about his sense of humor and self-deprecation and the ways in which he mentored and stood up for younger senators, particularly women.

Although I did not agree with many of Senator McCain’s policy views or political choices, I will always be grateful to him for taking a moral stand against torture when too few others would. His policy decisions were more complicated but, nonetheless, he was vocal in his opposition to torture—asserting that it is both wrong and ineffective. With the moral authority of a torture survivor, he rightly called “enhanced interrogation techniques” such as waterboarding, sleep deprivation, and electric shock what they are: torture. His outspoken resistance to torture was meaningful to other torture survivors around the globe and to those of us who have had the privilege of knowing and caring for them.

Senator McCain’s influence went beyond moral courage. He showed how a strength of conviction could coincide with civility. Both, he argued, are possible with humility. Like all of us, John McCain was an imperfect human being. Perhaps what made him stand out was how he embraced that vulnerability, continued to strive for his own code of ethics, and struggled to understand that of others and bridge the gaps in between. He appeared to understand that, in order to find solutions to today’s and tomorrow’s problems, we must both identify values that matter and listen to each other with respect and empathy.

There are many reasons to be encouraged about the future. However, there is also reason to worry about the silos we have created for ourselves—too often, without enough thought or compassion. We could all do a better job creating bridges instead of walls. I hope that, in the weeks and months to come, we can thoughtfully reflect on some of the life lessons provided by people like Senator McCain and United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who also died this month after a lifetime of demonstrating his own moral convictions and civility. Other notable figures have done the same, from civil rights icons Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rosa Parks to environmental crusader Rachel Carson to animal rights pioneer Tom Regan and so very many others. Though no one is perfect, they provided workable examples of how deeply held moral convictions and civility can coexist—even in the form of civil disobedience. As Senator McCain and they have shown, simultaneously holding onto moral convictions and civility is not always easy, but few worthwhile things in life are.

 

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