Now that I’ve re-devoted my free time to reading, I’m burning through books at a pretty good clip. This past week, I read Survival of the Sickest: A Medical Maverick Discovers Why We Need Disease. It was an interesting book, discussing the advantages that various diseases conferred on people throughout the ages and why they are now liabilities. Dr. Moalem talked about Type II Diabetes and Ice Ages; high cholesterol, skin color, and vitamin D; favism, sickle cell, and malaria; and various other diseases.

All in all, this was a very untechnical, easy read, only about 210 pages. I give it 3.5 stars. Through the first 5 chapters, I was thinking perhaps a 3 star rating because much of what he had to say was interesting, but not completely convincing. His discussion of genes, epigenetics, and aging starting in Chapter 6 brought the rating up a bit. As I started reading his epigenetics chapter, I was thinking that the article on epigenetics and male infertility couldn’t have come at a better time. He mentioned a bit about the theory of humans being descended from semi-aquatic apes, a theory which I’ve heard, but never read enough into to know if it should be given any credence. I’ll probably have a post on that in the future after I’ve had a chance to do some research.

Anyway, this book is worth checking out and you can probably burn through it in a few days of dedicated reading as I did. It’s not the best book out there, but it does certainly have some food for thought.

Edit: Thanks to Regina Wilshire for pointing out that the author of this book is male, not female. I changed all of the female pronouns to male pronouns.

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• What I’m Reading: The Paleolithic Prescription
• What I’m Reading: Death By Prescription
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Tags: Aquatic Apes, cholesterol, diabetes, disease, Dr. Moalem, evolution, Survival of the Sickest