Hunting and Science: prof. Umberto Veronesi on human evolution, “Hunting helps the production of male hormones and spermatozoa therefore helps fertility”.
Umberto Veronesi: The future tends towards gender equality, including hormonal parity. The reversal of roles in society has biological consequences, the difference between genders is disappearing. “I believe that one of the possible causes of this phenomenon is anthropological and lies in the change of family and social roles, which over time has produced a modification in the very biology of organisms”. Umberto Veronesi, scientific director of the European Institute of Oncology and above all an attentive observer of the evolution (for better or for worse) of humanity and the environment in which man lives and survives, has long been talking about a future tending to " even hormonal parity of genders. In reality, the decline in male fertility is nothing new: for 40 years, a progressive reduction in spermatozoa and their vitality has been observed in the West.
One of the causes, for Veronesi, is socio-evolutionary. What happens?
"If a man has to get up in the morning to hunt the prey that will provide food for himself and his own, if he has to kill, lurk, chase, the brain communicates its aggressive needs to the pituitary, which stimulates other glands including the gonads: from here the production of many male hormones, which in turn create sperm. If, on the other hand, the same man spends the day in the office, arrives home, cradles the child and helps with housework, his pituitary gland receives less stimulation and day after day his testicles "fall asleep" ».
The same example, reversed, can be done for women and the production of female hormones?
"Of course. The woman today must develop aggression, make a career, lead people, take responsibility, compete with men, endure double and triple roles, which suffocate her femininity. The result is that women face their first pregnancy at a later age and appear less and less feminine, socially and biologically ».
Hence, masculinity and femininity towards equality. With what consequences?
«The polarity that is at the origin of the phenomenon of attraction in nature is diminishing: opposite poles attract each other, the same ones repel each other. Furthermore, until 2000 years ago, humanity was dominated by the anguish of extinction. The obsession with lineage is clearly perceived by reading the Bible: sterility was the worst of evils and anything was justified in order to procreate, from betrayal to incest. Today, however, our anxiety is overpopulation and the social drive is to limit births. And demographic phenomena affect biology. There is a profound link between mind, hormonal structure and sexuality ».
All this also translates into a cultural change ...
«The result of the cultural influence on sexuality is under our eyes: homosexuality and bisexuality are constantly increasing, even if we consider greater freedom to declare a different or broader sexuality than a few decades ago. Gender changes are also on the rise, almost always in favor of women ».
Social and cultural influences, that's fine. But aren't there biological causes? Doesn't the environment affect?
“The delicate mechanism of sperm production can also be altered by other hormonal interferences. Obesity and overweight, for example, are negative factors because fat cells promote the production of estrogen, the main female sex hormones. Which can also be contained in some foods such as meat, because they are used to accelerate the development and weight gain in farmed animals ».
What to do then? Overweight can be avoided, meat consumption reduced, but it would be unhistorical to go back to the life patterns of over a century ago, when the roles of male and female were very distinct and polarity was very strong.
«A return to the past is impossible. The homologation of genders is a positive phenomenon for humanity because the entry on the scene of women with increasingly strategic roles can only lead to a better, more just and more peaceful world. It is up to science to contribute to the resolution of the problem of infertility, as is happening thanks to studies on assisted fertilization, which today is an increasingly social necessity. But science must not be hindered for ideological or principled reasons ».
An advice to the institutions, to the politicians?
«I would say a duty. That of leaving to our young people, who will increasingly have the problem of sterility, laws that help them to procreate. Otherwise there is a dramatic risk of a future without children ».
July 21 2013
Source: La27aOra - Article by Mario Pappagallo