Environment and biomedicine: A prospective research

Environmental evolution induces biological evolution. Man is more and more rapidly and deeply transforming his ecosystem with his exponential technical advances. This generally results in overall progress for health, as is shown by the increase in man's life span, but he also introduces new risks into his environment, and these are often only detected at long term. Continuous computation of the relationships between both environmental and biomedical parameters, which are increasingly well discriminated and quantified as a result of scientific (geophysical, spatial, molecular and genetic) research advances, should enable prospective survey not only of the effects of the introduction in human ecosystems of new physical energies, new chemicals, but also of the development of new viral diseases. The dimensions of the world biosphere are continuously shrinking as a measure of enhanced communication facilities and our planet's increasing population. A prospective approach to the environmental biomedical risks, ...