Dependence of the Develo** Nervous System on Nutrition and Hormones

Abstract

A large percentage of children in the “Third World,” and a significant number in the rich industrial countries, are unable to obtain food necessary for normal development, and many pregnant women suffer from malnutrition. It is therefore a question of the highest importance whether fetal or childhood malnutrition retards or otherwise alters neurological development. If so, the types of changes , their causal mechanisms , and the permanence or degrees of reversibility of the lesions are of very great moral and social concern. Ethical values are an important component of this research program. It should have attracted great scientific interest and generous public support, yet relatively little money and effort have been expended to answer important questions about causes, prevention, and treatment of physical and functional neurological damage resulting from fetal and neonatal malnutrition. This is evident from the small number of publications in this field in the past decade compared with the effiorescence of publications from other research programs of no greater scientific importance and of lesser human significance. The pregnant phrase of Brillat-Savarin at the beginning of this section should be written on the door posts of every national legislative assembly.

The destiny of nations depends on the manner of their nutrition.

Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (1755–1826), The Physiology of Taste, or Meditations on Transcendental Gastronomy, 1825

Charles Darwin (1809–1882), The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, 2nd Ed., 1875

He who admits the principle of sexual selection will be led to the remarkable conclusion that the nervous system not only regulates most of the existing functions of the body, but has indirectly influenced the progressive development of various bodily structures and of certain mental qualities. Courage, pugnacity ... bright colours and ornamental appendages, have all been indirectly gained by the one sex or the other, through the exertion of choice, the influence of love and jealousy ... and these powers of the mind manifestly depend on the development of the brain.

Charles Darwin (1809–1882), The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, 2nd Ed., 1875