Novel Insight into Hormonal Control of Reproduction and Ageing

Abstract

We are celebrating Prof. Egon Diczfalusy’s 80th birthday. In his lifetime he has seen a dramatic change in the way we think about disease and how to control it. One needs to consider the knowledge of our field in the first half of the twentieth century to appreciate this: it was a world devoid of antibiotics and pure pharmaceutical compounds, a world which did not have immunoassays, and certainly knew virtually nothing about DNA and everything we now understand by the terms molecular biology or biotechnology. What we should, therefore, consider in this discussion are not just ideas which could become realistic in the next 5 years or so, but also visions of a future world with changes and revolutions as dramatic as Professor Diczfalusy has seen in his lifetime. We should also think about whether we want the changes that are possible. In this way scientists need the “utopian standpoint” referred to by Prof. Mittelstrass, with a vision of the future, but also with a notion of how to get there in small steps. Partly, as Prof. Benagiano pointed out, much of what we need to do is simply to spread what we already know to the rest of the world, to apply the skills and information we already have. But we are still presented with many knowledge barriers which need first to be surpassed.