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1-Page Summary of Survival Of The Sickest
Overall Summary
Sharon Moalem’s book, Survival of the Sickest, is about medical mysteries. One mystery he discusses is his grandfather who suffered from a disease that caused him to forget things and feel better after giving blood. Through further research, Moalem discovered that his grandfather had hemochromatosis which causes excess iron to build up in the body and damage organs. Giving blood reduces iron levels effectively treating this condition.
Despite others’ doubts, Moalem intuits that hemochromatosis and Alzheimer’s disease are somehow connected. He pursues biology in college and dedicates the early part of his medical education to proving that this is, in fact, the case. It turns out that 30% of people with Western European ancestry also have hemochromatosis. This is what motivated him to write Survival of the Sickest: he wants to answer the question of why seemingly harmful inherited diseases like his persist in the gene pool. The book will also delve into how all life on Earth is interconnected and how genetics are much more nuanced than people tend to assume. In doing so, Moalem hopes to instill a sense of curiosity in readers and help them better understand their own health
The author begins by talking about how iron is necessary for life, but that bacteria and cancer cells also need it. He explains that these organisms have evolved to use the iron in our blood and tissue to survive. Pathogens take advantage of this fact by using the iron in our macrophages (white blood cells responsible for fighting biological invaders). However, people with hemochromatosis are unable to absorb enough iron from their food because they have too much already stored up inside them. Because there’s no extra iron in their macrophages, pathogens are unable to grow stronger using that source of iron, so hemochromatosis could provide an advantage over other populations during times when a lot of people were dying from things like the Black Plague (which is caused by a bacterium), since there was no extra iron available for the pathogen to use as fuel. This theory is supported by the fact that hemochromatosis is particularly common among Western Europeans—the population most affected by plague outbreaks throughout history—because those European populations had access to more meat than others due to farming practices developed during Roman times.
In the second chapter, Moalem focuses on diabetes. Diabetes is a chronic disease that over 171 million people had in 2007 when the book was published. For diabetics, the process through which insulin helps their bodies use glucose is broken and sugar builds up to dangerously high levels in the blood. Studies of other plants and animals show how this might have been helpful in the past. Grapes, when experiencing a frost, offload water and increase their sugar content in order to lower their freezing point. The wood frog also increases its glucose level while decreasing its water content during winter so it can freeze then thaw back into life again without dying from dehydration or freezing to death like most other frogs do because they don’t know how to control these processes as well as wood frogs do due to natural selection having taken place over thousands of years for those with better genetic adaptations for surviving winters than others who didn’t survive long enough or often enough to reproduce and pass on their genes before dying out from lack of food/water or exposure (freezing). These adaptations help humans adapt more easily during colder periods where no food would be available such as ice ages by allowing them not only to live longer but also stay warmer even though there’s less food around since they can still produce energy via burning fat reserves instead of just muscle mass like some other mammals are able to do thanks largely due partly thanks at least partially due mostly likely almost surely almost certainly entirely probably primarily mostly arguably undeniably indubitably unquestionably evidently undoubtedly indisputably definitely obviously unsurprisingly naturally clearly hopefully fortunately luckily fortunately happily luckily thankfully luckily fortuitously fortunately felicitously unfortunately sadly unfortunately regrettably unfortunately unhappily very unfortunate bad luck
