Environmental Medicine And Philosophy Of Environmental Pprotection

Author(s): Julian Aleksandrowicz
Publisher: Julian Aleksandrowicz

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ENVIRONMENTAL MEDICINE AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF... 77
Such research means putting questions to oneself as well as to other people and the surrounding world.
Present findings reveal that medicine as an institution is not adapted to the contemporary ecological situation, endangering the health of the entire international population.
Trying to find the reasons of the helplessness of medicine in its efforts * to prevent infarct, cancer and other civilizational diseases, it seems to me that the answer to this is given by the present-day development of science.
Despite the fact that science to some extent is the "centre of the setting in motion" of civilization as a whole, its development is uneven. An explosive development can be noticed only in physics and technical sciences, more slowly in biological sciences and the development of the humanities, especially ethics and the science of inter-human relations, is very slow.
The science of medicine and medical treatment is at the borderline of these two last mentioned fields, i.e. biology and ethics, the laws of which determine man's history. They guide the human being towards the implementation of his natural needs, and above all-health.
The guiding idea for the medical sciences of the future is the effort to find an answer to the question why there exist such enormous differences in feeling healthy and, what follows, in being happy, not only in the various parts of the world, in various cultural models, but also regarding small geographical distances, why there are such differences in mortality rates, not related to old age.
As representatives of the world health service we have entered a historical epoch that is significant due to its attempts to synthethize. We notice a dialogue between the superpowers. The religions of the world unite in ecumenical efforts. Dialogues are conducted by the faithful with the non-believers. And scientists sometimes of very remote specialities unite their efforts.
But pride of place is taken above all by one large movement embracing the entire world, aimed at the protection of the equilibrium of the natural environment in which we live. The intention of this movement is obvious. It is a question here, of the existence of the species. The inhabitants of industrialized countries die a premature death, they die at an increasingly younger age, due to arteriosclerosis and myocardial infarction, tumours and leukaemia, allergic and metabolic diseases etc., in brief-civilizational diseases.
Starvation and parasitic diseases destroy 2/3 of the populations of the countries of the Third World.
We, people living in countries with a high technical civilization, suffer because of the deteriorating "quality" of life. We suffer from a lack of subjective physical, mental and social fitness, defined as "health." The universal expression of the emotional disturbances of contemporary man is what we call "neurosis." This state of a subjective disturbance of feeling