Dr. Sharon Moalem's Survival of the Sickest is her attempt to challenge our modern understanding of illness. Survival of the Sickest begins by asking the reader to consider the concept that evolution is not simply one particular species adapting to its environment, but really a dynamic equilibrium where every organism within the system affects each other. This is a very apt metaphor that Dr. Moalem uses to frame the rest of the book, where she seeks to delineate the connections between evolution, disease, and health in the modern world.
For my blog post, I'd like to specifically examine how Dr. Moalem breaks down the importance of iron in the human body. The traditional understanding of iron is that it is one of the most important compounds used by the human body. It is required for "nearly every function of our metabolism", including the transportation of oxygen in our bloodstream and the conversion of sugar into energy. For many years, doctors and nutritionists "operated under the assumption that more iron can only be better", but more recent research shows that this is far from the truth. In fact, many of the parasites, cancer cells, and bacteria that assail our bodies thrive on iron, and adding too much iron to our bodies is simply providing more food for these assailants.
This key revelation is one of the central themes to Dr. Moalem's book. She wants us to consider disease from the standpoint of evolution - how is it that these certain genes have persisted in our DNA through all these years? For many years, we operated under the assumption that more iron could only be better for our bodies, but we failed to realize that if our own bodies require iron, then certain bacteria, fungi, and viruses would be extremely iron-hungry as well. I believe that the most valuable message that Dr. Moalem is trying to put forth is similar to what Robert Sapolsky was arguing in his book about stress, in order to understand disease and illness, we must utilize a perspective that incorporates all of the various factors, including other organisms and evolution.
I also thought that the chapter on iron was valuable. For me it illustrated the danger of having a one-dimensional view of health and proclaiming that factor X is good for all humans while factor Y is bad. This chapter showed that many doctors and scientists automatically assumed that more iron equals a healthier human. However, this assumption can and has had a very detrimental effect on the many members of the population who have too much iron in their body. Similarly, there is a wide spread consensus that the practice of bleeding a human in order to cure ailments is 100 percent backwards. Dr. Moalem did a great job at explaining how bleeding someone can and has been medically beneficial in a variety of situations, especially when a person has too much iron in their body. Essentially, this chapter exemplified that it's simplistic to assume that what is good or bad for one persons health will have the same effect on another person. Healthcare should be implemented based on what the individual person needs, not a general assumption that what is good for one person will be good for everyone.
ReplyDeleteWhen I think about the scientific information on iron and Dr. Moalem's thoughts about evolution, I also feel like Dr. Moalem tries to give a message beyond evolution and how human kind exists now because of specific diseases. I believe the equilibrium of how organisms affect each other and try to fight for their existence can be taken a step forward too. For example, with the existing and excess iron that enters our body, we feed our cells along with harmful bacteria, but somehow with evolution we have developed a system in which we defend our cells from the bacteria. Our cells do this with chelators, proteins that lock up iron so the bacteria cannot feed on it. We have evolved, we have survived but we have adapted, and I think that without adaptation none of this is possible.
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