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When
humans are exposed to compounds which are not in themselves true
poisons but precursors of harmful agents, there is the risk of
setting off those enzymatic systems which nature has provided as
defence systems against intrusive biotics. This has helped in the
past, since man first appeared on the earth along with many other
animal species with whom he shares environmental risks. This
entailed the adaptation to the environment based on slow, natural
rhythms: now all this has changed after the industrial revolution
and the technological progress and biomedical and scientific
advance it brought. Today things are radically different, we are
speaking about molecules and environmental conditions which our
ancestors, the ancient Romans and Greeks could have never dreamed
of existing. To be honest Imperial Rome polluted the world with
the heavy metals which were used in those times, above all lead,
and was to fall victim to lead poisoning, in its various clinical
forms.
But
today, in addition to the elements which cause direct damage to
our organism, we have to face a host of recently invented
compounds which are used in various industrial sectors. Man has
created a list of intrusive biotics which grows by the day. And it
with these precious and perverse new chemical discoveries that we
must do our reckoning, especially regarding the toxicological
potentiation risks based on enzymatic induction. The final result
is an alteration in life pattern which cannot be considered an
adaptation, in the positive sense of this term: on the contrary it
implies a drop in the quality of life and a shortening of life
expectancy where scientific progress has guaranteed a theoretical
increase in life expectancy.
Common sense should advise both the man in the street and the
scientist to acquire the maximum awareness of these environmental
risks if we do not wish to leave future generations an unliveable
destiny, rather like the one which saw the extinction of the
people of Imperial Rome. Form history we learn that it was
replaced by the Barbarians who arrived from distant lands:
Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Huns, Longobards and so on, maybe infested
with parasites, but mentally sane and fertile. |
