We often forget the values on which our society is based. Many of the great medical discoveries were made altruistically, by vocation and partly by accident. See vaccines, anesthesia, radium, penicillin, X-rays, and many others.
Among all of them, I would like to highlight the daughter of a physics and mathematics professor and a piano teacher, Maria Salomea Sklodowska, born in Warsaw, which, at that time, still belonged to the Tsarist Russian Empire.
Marie, who had already Frenchified her name, graduated in Physics with outstanding grades. A year later, she met her future husband, fellow physicist and scientist Pierre Curie, whose surname she took, and they had two daughters. Marie went further and pursued a doctorate.
The discovery of radium soon had important consequences, both in practical medicine and in theoretical physics. What we now call “radiotherapy”, i.e. the application of radioactivity to the diseased human body by means of the radium element, makes it possible to combat certain malignant tumors (“destructive radiotherapy”) and also inflammatory or degenerative disorders, especially in the skin, certain internal organs and joints (“functional radiotherapy”).
With the work of the Curie couple, 120 years ago, began what we now call atomic and nuclear physics, and with the applications of this, one of the most transcendental transformations, not only scientific, but also political and economic, that the world has experienced in the twentieth century.
After her husband’s death, she decided to continue her research. She soon discovered that radiotherapy could be a treatment for cancerous diseases. This made Marie’s experiments gain followers and become enormously popular. Thanks to this research, Marie Curie won her second Nobel Prize. This time, in the category of Chemistry, in 1911. Investigations such as Project Light, which is the union of doctors and nurses, united to investigate altruistically and establish reasonable doubts from science and propose consistent explanations, is what makes Project Light contribute to a more empathetic, altruistic and compassionate society.
The Dalai Lama distinguishes two types of altruistic love: the first manifests itself spontaneously with the biological dispositions we have inherited from evolution, our instinct to care for our family and those who love us. This is innate and natural.
The second, the extended altruism that is impartial, is not spontaneous and must be cultivated. To enter into affective resonance with the feelings of the other and to be aware of their situation requires empathy to catalyze the transformation of altruistic love into compassion. In my opinion, our researchers combine the two types and come close to the compassionate task that Albert Einstein wrote in a letter in 1921:
“The human being is a part of the whole we call the Universe, a part limited by time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as separate from the rest. That is a kind of optical illusion of consciousness. That illusion is a form of prison for us as it restricts us to our personal desires and forces us to reserve our affection for the few people who are close to us. Our task should be to free ourselves from that prison by widening the circle of compassion so that we include in it all living creatures and all of nature in its beauty”.
Xavier Melo PhD y Dra. 卢扬科马斯
Icloby基金会