Currently there are nations and other territories which are experiencing hunger, starvation, various epidemics, and disasters like tornadoes, earthquakes, and hurricane where nutrition may be compromised . During the past 6 months I gave a keynote presentation to 3 different groups stressing the importance of nutrition outlining that the nutritional status of individual's affects their immune system, the levels of their stress hormones like cortisol, DHEA, and sex hormones like testosterone, estrogens, etc. and play significant roles in the individual's responses to fight infections, as well as in social behaviour and mental functioning.
The usual responses to such disasters from unaffected nations is to send food, money, and other resources as aid. I feel that medical biochemical scientists should also visit such areas together with their mobile laboratories to collect informations on the status of various hematological, biological , and biochemical status of the components such as I have listed above.If the affected countries don't have such professional scientist. Because nutrition also plays a significant role in epigenesis , this latter phenomena such data might shed some light of how epigenesis plays a role in evolution
Unfortunately for past disasters scientists have already missed the opportunity to do such studies - One such disaster of the last century which comes to mind is the Holodomor . This genocide was man made and orchestrated by Stalin during the 1932-1933 winter in Ukraine. Historians estimated that at the height of this famine over 25,000 were dying daily-with the total death tole exceeding 3 million during this short period.
In the future when conferences marking anniversaries of such historic events are held not only should politicians but also biochemists and other research scientists should participate presenting scientific data on the role that nutrition deficiency may play- data which might even provide for the development of new diagnostic tools in Medicine and /or treatment benefits.
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