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

#96
Title: Survival of the Sickest: A Medical Maverick Discovers Why We Need Disease
Authors: Sharon Moalem and Jonathan Prince
Publisher: William Morrow & Company
Year: 2007
Genre: Science, Medicine
288 pages

Ignore the title and the hype about "a medical maverick." In fact, just take the dust jacket off. It was clearly constructed to be provocative, but it's not accurate.

Moalem marshals evidence for the positive or effective aspects of diseases that we might other characterize as harmful. He is able to do so (and stick to this theme) fairly consistently throughout the book. Afficionados of popular medical non-fiction will recognize some of the diseases and their associated anecdotes (there's some overlap with Meyers's Happy Accidents: Serendipity in Modern Medical Breakthroughs, for example). In some cases this association may not be evident until later in the chapter--"Of Microbes and Men," for example, treats evolutionary considerations for microbes and parasites that parallel those for humans.

I did find myself frustrated at times by what seemed like unreasonable dumbing down, leading to misinformation. On page 199, for example, Moalem discusses "the cold virus." The point would be stronger if he described the cold viruses, since there are a multitude of causal agents for "the cold." Some of his arguments are reductive and eliminate important considerations that are not well-expressed in an either/or paradigm (essence vs. environment makes multiple appearances inn this way, when the explanation is probably much more complex than the binary choice suuggests).

Still and all, this book was enjoyable and does a good job of eleborating on what is, for many people, a paradigm shift in thinking about the role of disease.