No more alarmist hysteria, please !
"Native" French people do not exist - and neither do races. Since the appearence of homo sapiens, themselves the result of inter-breeding between Neanderthals and others (so we can stop feeling superior), we have been the products of constant hybridation. Thanks goodness, as external input of genes makes us more resistant !
We can also shed the belief that evolution occurs in neat stages and is solely adaptive, geared towards producing more developed beings; it is also the result of disasters, epidemics and even behaviours - stressed laboratory rats will transmit fearful "characters" for 3 generations ! As for natural selection; it's a mistaken concept. The best will carry weight because others will submit to them in the hope of imitating them but the most competent and the most specialized also became the most vulnerable because they have lost their ability to adapt to new changes.
The human body, for its part, is not fixed entity. A human cell compromises 100 bacteria and 1000 viruses: medicine has got its work cut out ! Not to mention the cells we receive from outside - a woman, for example, can inheret male cells from her sons, and transmit them...
Today, it is scientifically impossible to predict the future. Everything is in constant mutation, in us, around us, on the earth and in the cosmos. Globalisation will have negative effects (epidemics, etc.) but also positive ones and the disappearance of biodiversity is not permanent - it has already disappeared in the past only to reappear later. We have seen civilisations die and others emerge elsewhere while periods of intense creativity have often been succeeded by sterile phases.
The aim of this book is not to play fortune-teller or to demolish religious theories (after all, Professor Raoult says ironically, everyone is free to define the source of DNA as they choose). This book encourages us only to rely on genuinely scientific data to avoid the scare-mongering caricatures that are now so widespread, for our physical as well as moral and mental health.
Author:
Didier Raoult, professor of microbiology at Marseille university, heads the world's largest infectious diseases research center. Author of Your health - All the lies you're told and how science helps you cut through them, he is the third most cited microbiologist in the world.
Publication date: April 2016
Pages: 304
Rights available: world
