Author(s): Sharon Moalem with Jonathan Prince

Popular Science

In this groundbreaking and absorbing book, wunderkind Dr. Sharon Moalem delves back into the evolution of man to reveal hitherto unknown and astonishing ways the human body is built to survive. With this revolutionary new book, Sharon Moalem completely turns modern medicine's understanding of disease on it's head. "It is not," he argues, "that dark country to which we're exiled when we're not 'healthy.' The truth, I intend to show you, is much more interesting and encouraging." His research will reveal that many common diseases are in fact complicated blessings. In considering the question of why diseases exist, Moalem proposes that most common diseases came into existence for very good reasons. Diabetes, hemochromatosis, cystic fibrosis, sickle cell anemia all may exist because at some point they helped our ancestors survive some grand challenge to human existence. In turn, he also discovered that genetic and cultural differences have led to each race having different and unique ways of reacting to their environment and subsequently how they become susceptible to certain diseases. With mesmerizing insight, Moalem demonstrates how diabetes may be a by-product of a mechanism that helped humans survive the Ice Age, why African Americans living in the north might suffer from vitamin D deficiencies, and why Asians can't drink as much alcohol as Europeans. Information in this book is extremely timely, such as Moalem's exploration of the Avian Flu, a disease that threatens to be the world's next great pandemic. Revelatory and written in an utterly engaging fashion, Sharon Moalem's book will change the way we think about our own bodies. First published 2007.