Benefits of Disease?

While reading the second half of “Survival of the Sickest,” I stumbled across a passage in the book that reminded me of the first book we read, “The Starting Gate: Birth Weight and Life Chances.” On page 159, there is a reference to a study done at Duke about how, “nutritional supplementation to the mother can permanently alter gene expression in her offspring without altering the genes themselves.” This discovery heavily impacts the debate we had earlier about if low birth weight has to do more with genetics or the state of health of the mother during pregnancy (favoring the health of the mother during pregnancy).

I found it interesting that certain diseases that ail us today helped with the survival of our ancestors. I already knew before that even though bacteria, usually seen as nuisances that cause disease, are necessary for us to process certain foods and provide us with vitamins that we cannot get ourselves. However, I was unaware there were actually diseases such as diabetes that improved the chances of survival in the past but are now a cause of death in the present. His theories seem to be plausible but I find it hard to believe that they tell the whole story. For example, when he talks about men being more susceptible to catch the bubonic plague than women can be accounted for in ways beyond just the iron deficiency in women. Since the bubonic plague was a contagious disease, men could have been more likely to catch it because they spend more time out of the house around others since they were the ones that worked. Women during those days spent more time at home, away from the public giving them less of a chance to be exposed to those with the disease outside their family members. Besides that example, his other arguments seem very plausible and quite fascinating. After reading this book, I now wonder if there is something comprising our bodies today that will be seen as a disease in the future.