"When you can not think, I want to help me die with dignity" 19/04/2009 Miguel Mora, El Pais.
April 22 is 100 years old Rita Levi-Montalcini. The Italian scientist, Nobel Prize, and feminist single sentence - "I am my own husband," said Senator for life long, and produces even more fascinating when you know closely. Just hear and see with difficulty, but not for: research, lectures, helping the less fortunate, and talk and remember with amazing clarity. Sobrada
character, shows her coquetry in the beautiful jewelry that looks, a bracelet she made herself Paola for her twin, the engagement ring of her mother, a splendid brooch designed by her also. From its vivid green eyes, Levi-Montalcini searches to a small group of reporters at the headquarters of the Roman foundation, where every evening driving education programs for African women.
In the morning visit the European Brain Research Institute, the institute established in Rome, and supervises experiments "a great group of young scientists, all women," who are learning about the protein molecule called Nerve Growth Factor (NGF ), which she discovered in 1951 and plays an essential role in cell division, and the brain, his specialty. "They are all female, yes, and it shows that talent has no gender. Women and men have equal mental capacity," he says.
With it, for 40 years, his right hand, Giuseppina Tripodi, who recently published a memoir, The hourglass of life, a synthesis of his fascinating story: his birth in Turin into a family of Sephardic origin The early decision to study and not to marry to avoid repeating the pattern of his mother, under the "rule Victorian" father's fascism and Mussolini's racial laws forced him to flee to Belgium and leave school, their years of work as a zoologist in Missouri (United States), the prize in Stockholm - "the matter that made me happy but famous - his reading and his friends (Kafka, Calvino, Primo Levi's intimate), until the present.
still lives thoroughly, eat only once a day and sleeps three hours. His attitude remains vital scientific and leftists. Pure question of reasoning, he explains, because the guilt of the great misfortunes of mankind has the right brain. "It is the instinctive, which served to bring down the tree Australopithecus and save your life. The little we have developed and the area to which dictators appeal for the masses to follow them. All tragedies always rely on that distrustful of different hemisphere. "
Lay and rigorous, will wholeheartedly support the biological and euthanasia. And do not fear death. "It is natural, one day but I did not kill. Just end up with my body." For its centenary, the teacher does not want gifts, parties or honors. That day will give a lecture on the brain.
How is life a hundred years? Great
. I only hear with a hearing aid and I see little, but the brain still works. Better than ever. Accumulate experience and learn to discard what does not.
Do you regret not having children? No.
was a teenager when I decided that I would never marry. Never have responded to a man like my mother was due to my father.
Remember when she decided to study? What did your father?
was the Victorian period. My father was a person of great intellectual and moral value, but a Victorian. Since she was against it, because I saw my father dominate everything, and I decided that I wanted to be in the background as my mother, whom he adored. She did not send. I told my father did not want to be neither mother nor wife, who wanted to be scientific and devote myself to the other, using the few skills I had to help those in need. I wanted to be a doctor and help the suffering. He said: "I do not approve but I can not stop you. "
What moments of his life have been more exciting?
The discovery I made, which is more important today than then. When each experiment confirmed my hypothesis, which was completely against the tenets of that time I lived thrills. Perhaps the most exciting. For the rest, the recognition of Stockholm I was so pleased, of course, but less exciting.
His thesis showed that the two hemispheres of the brain, one is less developed than another.
Yes, the limbic brain, the right hemisphere has had no functional or somatic development. And, unfortunately, still today dominates the other. Everything that happens in the great tragedies is due to the fact that this archaic brain dominates the real reason. So we must be alert. Today may be the end of humanity. In all the great tragedies is camouflaged intelligence and reasoning with low-level instinct. Totalitarian regimes of Mussolini, Hitler and Stalin convinced the people with that reasoning, that is pure instinct and emerges at the origin of vertebrate life, but that has nothing to do with reasoning. The danger is that what saved the tree when it fell Australopithecus continue to predominate.
In a hundred years you have known these totalitarianism. How can you prevent a recurrence?
We must begin in childhood education. Human behavior is not genetic but epigenetic, the child of two or three years assumes the environment in which they live and also the hatred of the different and all these terrible things that have happened and still passing.
What have you learned from your parents? What values \u200b\u200bdo you broadcast?
thing was behaving in a reasonable way, know what it's worth really. Have a thorough and good behavior, but without the idea of \u200b\u200breward or punishment. There was no idea of \u200b\u200bheaven and hell. We were religious, but the attitude to life was not about religion. There was a sense of duty, but without compensation post mortem. We had to behave well, that's an obligation. Then there was talk of genetics, but it was that spirit. No reward or fear.
Its origin is Sephardic. Did they speak English at home?
No, never had much to do with that language. We knew that we came from the Sephardic and Ashkenazi not on, but nobody talked about it, we did not care much be one or the other. Spinoza made me happy, was a great cultural reference, and everything we knew came from the great Jewish thinkers, but there was a sense of pride, to be better, never think so.
it enough to understand a century Italy?
is a wonderful country, the climate, the history of the Renaissance, and their enormous contributions, history and discoveries formidable capacity. I always felt Jewish and Italian, both at 100%. He saw no difficulty in that.
How do you see in Italy today?
has a very strong human capital, innovative capacity and coexistence, the pride of the past and not feel too affected by the negative things, like the mafia. I always felt it was a country that was fortunate to join and be born. Being Italian was part of us, nobody asked us if we were Italian or not. It was also fortunate to be Jewish. I never knew Bible, I had a religious upbringing, and I reflected on the artistic and moral capital Italian and Jewish. I did not belong to a small persecuted minority, knew that it happened, but I was not part of it. Since a child I felt like everyone else. When I asked "what is your religion?", He answered: "I, free-thinking", and nobody knew what it was. And thy Father which is: engineer.
How did fascism?
I have no personal grudge . Without the racial laws, which determined that Jews were an inferior race, not have had to place me in my room to work, in Turin and then Asti. But I never felt inferior.
So you do not feel afraid?
Fear not, contempt and hatred itself, purely by Mussolini. My Professor Giuseppe Levi followed him step by step and was happy with what he boldly dared to do and say. I never felt the prosecution because my college friends considered me as Catholics. I had no sense of danger. When the persecution began, things were so filthy that I did not say that the hint. I was already licensed in 1936, studied with Renato Dulbecco, Catholic, and Salvatore Luria, Jewish, and had no sense of being different.
Do you think there is a danger that fascism again?
Yes, at critical times more prevalent instinctive component of the brain that is camouflaged to reason and encourages young people to reason as if they were part of a superior race.
you followed the controversy over the pope, condoms and AIDS?
not share what he said.
What do you think of the power of the Church? Is it too much?
Yes I was the first woman admitted to the Pontifical Academy and had a good relationship with Paul VI and Wojtyla, Ratzinger also, though less deep that Paul VI, who esteem. I had not considered that instead with Pope Well, Roncalli (John XXIII), which for me was not good, because it was a close friend of Mussolini and when they started anti-fascist laws said he had done much good for Italy.
Has his thinking changed much over life?
Little, little. I always thought that the woman was destroyed because the man his power imposed by physical force and not the mental. And with physical force can be trunk, but not a genius. I think yet.
Would you ever imported the glory?
For me, medicine was the way to help those not fortunate to live in a highly educated family like mine. This straight line has not changed. Scientific activity and social are the same thing. Aid to African women and medicine are the same.
Your brain is still a mystery?
No. It is now much less mysterious. The development of science is formidable, we know how it works from the scientific and technological side. Their study is no longer a privilege of the experts in anatomy, physiology or behavior. Anatomists have not done much, removing some. Now there are no barriers. Physicists, mathematicians, computer scientists, biochemists and molecular, all bring new things. And that opens up possibilities for new discoveries every day. I myself, for 100 years, still making important discoveries that I think about factor operation discovered more than 50 years.
Will birthday party?
No, I want to be forgotten, that's my hope. No fault or merit in turning 100 years. I can say that the eyes and ears have fallen, but the brain fails. I have a mental capacity may exceed the age of 20. Has not slowed the ability to think and live ...
Tell us the secret.
The only way is to keep thinking, ignore yourself and be indifferent to death, because death strikes us not to us but to our body, and one leaves messages persist. When I die, die my tiny single body.
Are you ready?
not necessary. Dying is logical. How
want to live?
time to work the brain. When chemical factors lose the ability to think, I'll leave that in my living will I be helped to leave my life with dignity. It may happen tomorrow or after tomorrow. That's not important. The important thing is to live with serenity, and always think with the left hemisphere, not to the right. Because that leads to the Holocaust, the tragedy and misery. And it can lead to the extinction of the human species.
