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Marta Toraldo, Luana Conte, Domenico Maurizio Toraldo
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DOI:10.17265/2159-5313/2021.03.005
University of the Salento, Lecce, Italy; ASL (Local Health Authority), Lecce, Italy; “V. Fazzi” Hospital, Lecce, Italy.
As an advanced theory of evolution, neo-Darwinism broadens the concept of Darwinism, in which natural selection intervenes to ensure that those genes that best meet the need for adaptation to the environment are conserved in the genetic background. Culture, which in human beings contributes to biological adaptation, is the sum of all the knowledge and technical innovation deriving from individual practical contributions handed down from one generation to the next, continuously influencing and changing biological life. As an unforeseen mechanism of adaptation, culture has enabled human beings to survive and to adapt to situations of environmental change and crisis. Indeed, climate change determines both cultural and genetic changes. The deterioration of the climate can have a significant impact on the spread of infectious diseases, to the point that the random mutation of a virus, such as SARS-Cov2 can easily result in a pandemic. We have violated biological ecosystems, destroying the environment and the communities that inhabit it. Spillover is what happens when an agent of disease, be it a virus or a bacterium, for any of a number of reasons, passes from one species to another, generating a zoonosis, i.e., an infectious agent that can affect human beings. The mechanisms of biological evolution act on them rapidly, generating new biological potential and transforming spillovers into pandemics. We need to invest in multidisciplinary scientific and technological research, which entails interaction between various fields of knowledge including ecological, meteorological, anthropological, cultural, medical, and environmental. All these disciplines are closely connected to each other and to the health of animals, human beings, and ecosystems, and it is only by coordinating them that we can hope to respond rapidly to the new health and environmental emergencies and provide political decision-makers with correct information that can protect the human population from decline and extinction.
exaptation, environmental challenges, virus Sars-Cov2, spill over
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