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Survival of the Sickest: A Medical Maverick Discovers Why We Need Disease
by: Sharon Moalem, Jonathan Prince

List Price: $25.95

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Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 616.042
Format: Bargain Price
Label: William Morrow
Manufacturer: William Morrow
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 288
Publication Date: February 01, 2007
Publisher: William Morrow
Release Date: February 06, 2007
Studio: William Morrow
Sales Rank: 50767

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Editorial Review:

Product Description:

Read it.

You're already living it.

Was diabetes evolution's response to the last Ice Age? Did a deadly genetic disease help our ancestors survive the bubonic plagues of Europe? Will a visit to the tanning salon help lower your cholesterol? Why do we age? Why are some people immune to HIV? Can your genes be turned on -- or off?

Joining the ranks of modern myth busters, Dr. Sharon Moalem turns our current understanding of illness on its head and challenges us to fundamentally change the way we think about our bodies, our health, and our relationship to just about every other living thing on earth, from plants and animals to insects and bacteria.

Through a fresh and engaging examination of our evolutionary history, Dr. Moalem reveals how many of the conditions that are diseases today actually gave our ancestors a leg up in the survival sweepstakes. When the option is a long life with a disease or a short one without it, evolution opts for disease almost every time.

Everything from the climate our ancestors lived in to the crops they planted and ate to their beverage of choice can be seen in our genetic inheritance. But Survival of the Sickest doesn't stop there. It goes on to demonstrate just how little modern medicine really understands about human health, and offers a new way of thinking that can help all of us live longer, healthier lives.

Survival of the Sickest is filled with fascinating insights and cutting-edge research, presented in a way that is both accessible and utterly absorbing. This is a book about the interconnectedness of all life on earth -- and, especially, what that means for us.

Amazon.com Review:
Dan Ariely on Survival of the Sickest
MIT professor Dan Ariely has become one of the leaders in the growing field of behavioral economics, and his bestselling book debut, Predictably Irrational, has brought his ideas--and his ingenious experiments and charming sense of humor--to a much wider audience. With the simplest of tests (often an auction or a quiz given under a few conditions) he shows again and again not only that we are wired to make irrational decisions in many situations, but that we do so in remarkably predictable ways.

I have always been puzzled by the way in which genetic diseases have managed to survive throughout the ages. How could it be that these diseases were able to withstand the evolutionary process, where only the most fit survive, and continue to be transferred from one generation to the next? Survival of the Sickest provides a thought provoking yet entertaining explanation to this puzzle.

In this insightful book Dr. Sharon Moalem demonstrates how conditions that are considered unhealthy (such as hemochromatosis, diabetes, and high cholesterol), or even deadly in extreme cases, might actually put their carriers at an advantage in combating other life-threatening illnesses. For example, he explains that hemochromatosis, a disease that, if left untreated, will kill you, may have actually been a defense against the deadliest pandemic in history--the bubonic plague during the 14th century. It turns out that this genetic mutation, which continues to be passed down through generations, actually helped spare many lives at one point.

Throughout the book, Dr. Moalem draws many connections between seemingly disparate subjects, such as the accidental invention of ice wine and cold diuresis, in order to illustrate the basic mechanisms of genetics and medicine in charming and intuitive ways. He skillfully interweaves his knowledge of history, genetics, and medicine not only as they relate to specific medical conditions but also in a way that addresses important challenges of modern society and our future evolution.

In the most general terms, Dr. Moalem's description of the human body and its complexity left me in awe of how far we have come in our understanding of biology and medicine, while also being reminded that the road to understanding ourselves is still wide open with much more to learn in the decades, and even centuries, to come. It is a fantastic journey on which he leads us and Dr. Moalem is a kind, knowledgeable, humorous, and helpful guide.

Customer Reviews

Average Rating: out of 5 stars

Rating:

- Get Sicker, Live Longer?
Dr. Sharon Moalem's Survival of the Sickest was a fascinating book that was both educating and entertaining. Moalem's light and simple take on difficult concepts makes this 250-page title feel like an easy read. This book is also filled with an enormous amount of information about the human body and the amazing way it has developed and evolved along with viruses, bacteria, and disease.

One of the concepts repeatedly discussed by Moalem is how some deadly diseases have actually helped our ancestors survive. For example, hemochromatotis is a hereditary disease that changes the way your body metabolizes iron. In short, it results in your body having an extreme excess of iron, which affects your bodily functions, eventually leading to death. However, during medieval times, it helped ... Read More

Rating:

- this book is very interesting!
Anyone that is interested in Darwin's theory of "survival of the fittest" or interested in medicine will love this book. The author explains all medical terms so it is readable for those who are not familiar with medical terminology.

Rating:

- So, bloodletting got a bad rap!
I found the book's insight into practices such as bloodletting to be worth the price of the book alone.

So often we believe we know everything today. I always wondered why people didn't simply bleed to death and stop the practice of bloodletting. Well, it turns out, if you read this book, that there is some medical benefit to bloodletting (if you don't go too far with it).

I knew of this when my relative was diagnosed 40 years ago with a disease of anemeia, which required that he get blood transfusions frequently.

Once I was told that he was getting dangerous build ups of iron from this and that the best way to relieve this was by giving blood transfusions.

It all clicked when I read this book. I leave it to the reader to enjoy the irony (pun ... Read More

Rating:

- Fascinating Here; a Bit of a Stretch There
That some diseases express themselves as survival traits, or could be precursors to a genome's ability to ward off disease, is a fascinating topic. Some disease origins, such as sickle-cell anemia, seem very obvious in the context of their emergence; others...well, maybe. Dr. Moalem engages in some speculation, but even though this book is written for the general, non-scientific reader--in language that is a little bit too cutesy sometimes--he is still careful to add qualifiers and provisos. He makes no claims, he just presents causality observations of various disease origins, extrapolating from research going on in the field.

The chapters on genetic diseases become a bit serpentine. Wandering genes and epigenetic factors contribute to a chaos of influences that seem to reinforce punctuated ... Read More

Rating:

- Good for people that don't know biology
It's a very good book, that is well written and quite informative about the genetic disorders that it covers. Would be a really good book for recruiting young people into the medical sciences, because it seems to be written for a younger age group.

Books : Survival of the Sickest: A Medical Maverick Discovers Why We Need Disease