Environmental Medicine And Philosophy Of Environmental Pprotection

Author(s): Julian Aleksandrowicz
Publisher: Julian Aleksandrowicz

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74 PHILOSOPHY AND SOCIAL ACTION within ourselves in different ways, dependent on our personality traits, on the extent of our emotional maturity, on the state of our senses, on the resources of our life experiences, on the culture with which our social group has imbued us, on the ecological environment, which is the substance of which our bodies are made, etc. In brief, it depends on the historical period and the geographical space in which we live.
Detached from reality we examine this reality and try to learn more and more about it, in order to be able consciously to create a better fate for ourselves and the entire population of our globe. It is our desire to learn about the conditions that should be changed to achieve what we define as health. We feel disappointed when the environmental protection movement limits itself exclusively to information that so and so many tons of waste substances from factory chimneys are polluting the earth or contaminating the water, causing the dying out of many species of animals, etc.
Today we already demand that efforts should be made to protect the health, even if only based on hypothetical assumptions.
Since we possess the findings of experiments conducted with animals and retrospective observations made with people, from which we obtained data pointing to the fact that shortcomings in man's natural environment, the consequence of which are lack of manganese ions causing teratogenesis, molybdenum deficiency, causing caries, iodine deficiency-diseases of the thyroid gland, iron deficiency - anaemia, lithium deficiency — mental diseases, magnesium and chromium deficiency – lymphatic anaemia and atherosclerosis, selenium and copper deficiency — neoplastic diseases etc., we should already today adopt prophylactic measures. After all, quantitative changes of these mineral components of the soil which are brought about by our own activity, are due to incorrect use of chemical substances by agriculture or pollution of the soil with industrial waste. Therefore it is imperative that efforts should be made to restore the equilibrium of mineral components in the soil, water and with the same further trophic links related to man.
One of the reasons for the dramatic situation of our times seems to be the present-day universal fascination with the development of the exact sciences.
Physics and mathematics achieved the highest organizational level of science. Their development undoubtedly influenced the entire scientific world outlook. Biology too turned into one of the exact sciences and thanks to the discoveries made in this field biology directly exerts its influence on the development of communities.
Under the pressure of these sciences the human being succumbs to reification. He turns into a concrete material object of manipulations on the part of factors that are beyond his control. Bent on the effectiveness of current activity, wanting to obtain immediate results, he loses the ability of long-range anticipation of the side effects of his activity. Thus man in a way turns into an object and treats others like objects; in this way he