Mes ancêtres cagots

Short-sightedness is reaching epidemic proportions. Some scientists think they have found a reason why. East Asia has been gripped by an unprecedented rise in myopia. Today, up to 90% of Chinese teenagers and young adults are short-sighted. Other parts of the world have also seen a dramatic increase in the condition, which now affects around half of young adults in the USA and Europe. By some estimates, the world may count nearly half a billion of blind people in 2050. In severe cases, the deformation of the eyeball increases the risk of retinal detachment, cataracts, glaucoma and even blindness. About one-fifth of university-aged people in East Asia now have this extreme form of myopia, and half of them are expected to develop irreversible vision loss. This threat has prompted a rise in research to try to understand the causes of the disorder — and scientists are beginning to find answers…

For a long time, it was believed that genes were the decisive factor in a person's development. However, the latest scientific findings in the field of epipgenetics have shown that the respective expression of genes is influenced by external circumstances and can even be specifically controlled.

For the first time in over a century, Yeti legends and personal accounts have become the subject of scientific studies. Does the Yeti really exist? Fascinating and thorough, our film sets out to meet the teams involved in this strange race across the world, featuring laboratories, hair analysis, footprints and DNA as well as the search for samples in Indonesia and in Canadian nature reserves.