David Good

For decades, Yanomami communities have faced an invasion of illegal gold miners, devastating epidemics, cultural degradation, and environmental destruction. A major part of my mission is to confront the threat to the survival of the Yanomami people and their rainforest home in the Amazon. The Amazon ecosystem stabilizes the world climate and is a source of medicine and healing for the diseases of today and tomorrow. The Yanomami people, with their boundless knowledge of the Amazon, are critical in preserving this precious ecosystem.

My work also pioneers discovery research and exploration of the human microbiome, the collection of all the bacteria, viruses, and fungi that live in and on our bodies. The public has become increasingly aware of how microbes play a critical role in human development and the maintenance of the immune system. However, industrialization has led to a massive decline of microbial diversity due to the overuse of antibiotics, consumption of ultra-processed foods, along with limited interaction with the environment, sedentary lifestyles, and extreme sanitation practices. Research has shown that an imbalanced microbiome is linked to chronic inflammatory and autoimmune diseases such as diabetes, irritable bowel disease, asthma, allergies, and colorectal cancer, to name a few.