Main trends of research in the social and human ... - unesdoc - Unesco

364 Jean Bourgeois-Pichat
diabetic to lead a normal life. Nowadays he is able to work, to marry, have
children, whereas before, his activities were severely restricted, and having
children was out of the question. But, of course, the daily injection of insulin
has no effect on the genetic deficiency which can be the root cause of the disease.
So, by allowing the diabetic to beget children, we encourage the transmission of
the disease. The case of the diabetic is simply quoted here as an example, be-
cause it is the most striking and perhaps the oldest and most carefully studied,
but of course there are many other similar cases.
37. All these cases lead in the same direction as the accumulation in the popula-
tions of individuals designated as ‘cured’, to whom we have already referred.
These phenomena have made their appearance too recently for us to be able to
gauge the consequences with any precision, but they already comprise a vast
field towards which research ought to be directed in the coming years. This
raises the whole problem of eugenics, which is stirring up very serious moral
considerations.
38. All that we have been saying here about diseases applies equally well to
those of old age, but the treatment of the latter has social and psychological
repercussions which call for additional research. It is well known that the
decrease in the death-rate applies particularly to youth. At the age when the
diseases of the senescent begin to play a serious part, the decrease has been
less marked, indeed, in certain cases, an increase has been registered.
Health priority
39. The problem no longer appears to be a medical one. Certain research work
has shown what should be done so that the drop in the death-rate at this time
of life should continue. The main factors responsible are obesity, high blood-
pressure, too rich a diet, the consumption of alcohol and the immoderate use of
tobacco. This means, of course, changing the whole way of life if a continued
lowering of the death-rate is desired. It does not seem as if man were socially
and psychologically ready to accept such changes. To do everything possible to
save a human life is a basic principle of the present-day morality of humanity,
but it would seem to apply only to the moment when the danger of death be-
comes manifest.
40. For instance, it is assumed that an inveterate smoker suffering from cancer
of the lung has every right to expect society to do its utmost to cure him. But
this same smoker bears a certain responsibility for what has happened to him,
and if he calls on society to help him in the last phases of the disease which
finally causes his death, surely society would have had every right to require
him to change his way of life during the preceding phases of the development of
his disease. Here we come up against a source of dispute which ought to engage
the future attention of research.
41. We can observe here a change in the way of regarding questions of mortality
different from the one we noted in fertility cases. Fertility, which is determined