Sharon Moalem
Hardcover | Pages: 267 pages Rating: 4.15 | 6710 Users | 618 Reviews
List Books Supposing Survival of the Sickest: A Medical Maverick Discovers Why We Need Disease
| Original Title: | Survival of the Sickest: A Medical Maverick Discovers Why We Need Disease |
| ISBN: | 0060889659 (ISBN13: 9780060889654) |
| Edition Language: | English |
Commentary Concering Books Survival of the Sickest: A Medical Maverick Discovers Why We Need Disease
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?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..
Define About Books Survival of the Sickest: A Medical Maverick Discovers Why We Need Disease
| Title | : | Survival of the Sickest: A Medical Maverick Discovers Why We Need Disease |
| Author | : | Sharon Moalem |
| Book Format | : | Hardcover |
| Book Edition | : | Deluxe Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 267 pages |
| Published | : | February 6th 2007 by William Morrow (first published 2007) |
| Categories | : | Science. Nonfiction. Health. Medicine. Medical. Biology |
Rating About Books Survival of the Sickest: A Medical Maverick Discovers Why We Need Disease
Ratings: 4.15 From 6710 Users | 618 ReviewsCriticize About Books Survival of the Sickest: A Medical Maverick Discovers Why We Need Disease
Marketing looked like a complete ripoff of Freakonomics. Style reads like Freakonomics with a personal health/medicine spin. Too boldly mixes well accepted medical observations: Sickle Cell Anemia is related to genes that provide resistance to Malaria. Get one you're good, get two you're screwed.With absolutely left field speculation: African-Americans have high incidents of hypertension and heart disease due to a artificial selectional pressure exerted on them by their ancestors' passage acrossThis was published in 1997 and there is a blip between chapters and musical transitions. Everything out there is influencing everything else. Dancing and consuming with my eyes/ears Moalems Survival of the Sickest: A Medical Maverick Discovers Why We Need Disease was not as fluid yet intrigued me as how the human species adapts to the environment. A common disease does have an etiologic relationship to the cold, and such is Diabetes he states. Erudition via the way streptococcus has molecular
I suppose I judged this book by it's cover, making it a little disappointing when I read it. The author also goes off on some random tangents that I found distracting. That being said, there were some interesting parts -- particularly the discussion of how many genetic diseases are with us because they offered a survival benefit to our ancestors.
The thesis sounds interesting, but the author doesn't provide very many examples, and for those he does, the evidence is speculative at best. Do people have diabetes today because it "may" have helped during the ice age? Prove it. While he tries to explain the past, he offers no ideas as to how things may change now that the ice age is over and plague is rare. He cites his sources, but if you check them out, many turn out to be ordinary newspapers like US Today. These are not valid sources of
4.5 stars!!
This book was EXCELLENT! Despite being written in 2007, this book is as up to date as any book about evolution. In fact, it's even better than his 2014 book Inheritance. If you are tired of reading books that work very hard to preserve the image of the selfish gene and are looking for a book that celebrates the newer information researchers have gained since the 1970s, I highly recommend reading this. Geneticist Sharon Moalem examines the role that jumping genes, parasites and viruses, and
I enjoyed this book. Hopefully this will help me with ap bio. As it talked about how evolution and natural selection worked. Like the people who survived in extreme cold conditions and that resulted in some people with a natural tendency to have diabetes descend from people from the younger dryas. My favorite topic that he went over was chap 5 Of microbes and men. This explains how they came up with the rod of Asclepius. This also explained how the folklore of werewolves came about and how you
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