The child between nature and culture.

Medicine changes: some diseases disappear and "new" ones arise. New therapies also pose new problems, some of which even have bioethical traits. Progress often produces diseases. In any case - for good or for worse - culture, the foundation of progress, deeply interferes with the natural environment in which the child lives, and constantly modifies it, especially, or indeed, in industrial societies. For a better quality and longer duration of life, the hope should be to put culture as extensively as possible in the service of nature so as to not contaminate or deteriorate it and so as to prevent progress from turning against man. Especially in industrial societies, the family too has furthermore changed and has provided the child with different living conditions. New pediatrics and the new pediatrician are committed to a better management of the problems posed by changing medicine as well as by the changes undergone by the environment as a function of culture and progress.