Survival of the Sickest: The Surprising Connections Between Disease and Longevity
Survival of the Sickest: The Surprising Connections Between Disease and Longevity Books
- ISBN13: 9780060889661
- Shape up: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
Joining the ranks of modern myth busters, Dr. Sharon Moalem turns our current understanding of illness on its head and challenges us to fundamentally exchange the way we reckon about our bodies, our health, and our relationship to just about every other living thing on earth. Through a fresh and engaging examination of our evolutionary history, Dr. Moalem reveals how many of the conditions that are diseases today really gave our ancestors a leg up in the survival sweepstakes. But Survival of the Sickest doesn’t stop there. It goes on to exhibit just how small modern medicine really understands about human health, and offers a new way of thought that can help all of us live longer, healthier lives.
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 introduction, Predictably Irrational, has brought his thoughts–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 below 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 everlastingly been puzzled by the way in which genetic diseases have managed to survive throughout the ages. How may possibly it be that these diseases were able to withstand the evolutionary administer, where only the most fit survive, and continue to be transferred from one generation to the next? Survival of the Sickest provides a plotting 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 really place their carriers at an advantage in combating other life-threatening illnesses. For example, he clarifies that hemochromatosis, a disease that, if left untreated, will kill you, may have really been a defense hostile to 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, really helped emergency many lives at one top.
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 vital 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, even as 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.
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if you’ve ever been to high school, much less college, you’ll probably find the tone, language and reference points tedious: For example, referring to evolution as a “global Macarena”–sad enough on its own but this book was written a decade after that dance died–can only result in embarrassment to the author. Too, the 26-page introduction clarifies over and over what can be summed up in a sentence or two: That unless something is fatal to an organism, it’ll probably be passed by the side of to the organism’s offspring. If that sort of writing is your thought of a excellent time, you just might delight in this book!
Rating: 1 / 5
This book embodies much of what I dislike in well loved cience books, even as having few of the qualities I admire in such books. It relies more on sleigh of the hand and razzle dazzle, you-wouldn’t-have-plotting-of-it than on throughly plotting out, well substantiated lines of plotting.
Let’s start with the subtitle: “A medical maverick discovers why we need disease”. That is a clear case of fiction: nowhere in the book does the author “learn” anything; he merely retells the study of others. This, of course, is not a demerit, as many fascinating scientists have difficulties in explaining their work in clear terms, acessible to the layman. But, the author must be hyped as the “discoverer”, as the focal top figure in the tale.
Since James Burke’s “Connections”, it seems that well loved science must explore all the crossroads, no matter how irrelevant. So Moalem goes on long tangents that have small to do with the theory he is trying to substantiate. In order to show how diabetes works to protect the body hostile to cold, the reader is taken through the means of an ice age, how ice core samples are indifferent and so on. If one were to remove all this “extra” material, this book would be thin indeed.
The book seems to revolve nearly this material and the author’s use of jokes. Unfortunately, his sense of humour tends more towards ha-ha than amusing, which helped to further fray my patience towards this book.
All of this is indeed a pity, as the theme is very fascinating. If more pages had been dedicated to developing a central line of plotting and substantiation and to showing the debate behind all these thoughts (in a real light, instead of “the thickheaded traditionalists who won’t accept new thoughts”), it would be well worth the read.
Rating: 1 / 5
The title of my review sums up my opionion of this book: there is a lot of very fascinating in rank here but the writing style is annoying. The author uses a lot of corn-ball humor and stupid puns – in fact every chapter heading is an dreadful pun – to such an extent that I quickly got sick of reading it. This book is also written for the layman, which I reckon is vital for the sake of getting some pretty fascinating theories into the mainstream, but if you were a science major in college – or even if you passed all of your high school bio classes, you may find that this reading is a small too dumbed down. Here are some direct quotes from this book to illustrate my top. This would make Bob Sagat groan:
“Four out of five dentists may recomment Trident-but ten out of ten infectious-disease experts will give you the same resolution if you question them to solve that riddle: the resolution is malaria.”
“Too many solanine-rich french fries and you’re french fried.”
This book gets three stars for being fascinating and informative, but also obnoxious and dumbed-down.
Rating: 3 / 5
If Moalem and Prince were more careful with their facts, and pointed their readers to other works in this field, I would rate this book 5 stars. It is lively and readable, and will please many light readers.
On the other hand … even as there is a reference in the notes to a Scientific American review article by Nesse and Williams, there are no mentions of their brilliant books “Why We Get Sick” and “Evolution and Healing”. Even as a light reader may find those books a bit dry, a more scientifically minded reader will find much food for plotting. Moalem and Prince are not trying to be scholarly, but they should acknowledge their scholarly antecedents. There are echos of Nesse and William’s “Evolution … ” in the structure and style of Moalem and Price’s “Sickest …”, and that should be noted.
The material on human cryonic suspension (page 42 of the first hard cover edition) should either be properly researched or left out of future editions. Wood frogs cannot depend on external interventions to recover from freezing – humans have more options. Whether cryonics will eventually work or not, cryonics practitioners focus on the minimization of freezing hurt to cellular structure, and perfuse their subjects with high concentrations of ice-thwarting chemicals. Research in this area is already improving preservation for transplants. There is still massive cell hurt, of course, and the cryonic subjects beginning the administer are already “dead”, so there will be a lot to repair. But, the structural, chemical, and genetic in rank necessary to make those repairs and replacements is preserved by the bespoke freezing administer. Molecular scale nanomachines and external computation and direction will be essential to repair the hurt, but high-tech external manipulation is needed now to cure many diseases. The necessary technology is below development. Check the Alcor (www.alcor.org) and Foresight Institute (www.foresight.org) websites for pointers to these fascinating subjects. They, too, can be a small purple in their prose, but they ordinarily acknowledge the speculative nature of their work, and the long road ahead of them.
I hope the other unreferenced material in “Survival …” is more firmly grounded. Even as the “on the one hand, on the other hand” style of many scientific works is aggravating to readers who want blinding certainty, it does help careful readers know the actual state of knowledge. Even if banished to the notes, such “weasel wording” can keep the authors of review books such as this from being tagged as exemplars of error, as they note happened to Lamark. Moalem can write a better book than this, and I hope he gets the opportunity.
Rating: 3 / 5
I absolutely like reading books where I learn a fantastic number of new things. This book provided me with absolutely that. There were bounty of times where I said to myself, “That’s very fascinating, I never knew that.” Unfortunately by the side of with these revelations came some pretty dry and mind numbing in rank. Reader beware.
Pros
- Some fantastic in rank and parallels between past and bestow. Everything from brown stout to parasites to diabetes.
- Author uses a life experience to pursue a career and then publish their findings.
Cons
- Although there’s a lot of fantastic in rank included it’s rather poorly edited at times. There were sections that droned on and contained a bit too much jargon for my liking.
- Too many uses of terrible puns/play on words. Starts out charming, ends up annoying.
It was an informative read but that’s about it. I may possibly have gotten the same in rank watching documentaries on Discovery.
Rating: 3 / 5