en
Books
Rob Dunn

The Wild Life of Our Bodies

A biologist shows the influence of wild species on our well-being and the world and how nature still clings to us—and always will.
We evolved in a wilderness of parasites, mutualists, and pathogens, but we no longer see ourselves as being part of nature and the broader community of life. In the name of progress and clean living, we scrub much of nature off our bodies and try to remove whole kinds of life—parasites, bacteria, mutualists, and predators—to allow ourselves to live free of wild danger. Nature, in this new world, is the landscape outside, a kind of living painting that is pleasant to contemplate but nice to have escaped.
The truth, though, according to biologist Rob Dunn, is that while “clean living” has benefited us in some ways, it has also made us sicker in others. We are trapped in bodies that evolved to deal with the dependable presence of hundreds of other species. As Dunn reveals, our modern disconnect from the web of life has resulted in unprecedented effects that immunologists, evolutionary biologists, psychologists, and other scientists are only beginning to understand. Diabetes, autism, allergies, many anxiety disorders, autoimmune diseases, and even tooth, jaw, and vision problems are increasingly plaguing bodies that have been removed from the ecological context in which they existed for millennia.
In this eye-opening, thoroughly researched, and well-reasoned book, Dunn considers the crossroads at which we find ourselves. Through the stories of visionaries, Dunn argues that we can create a richer nature, one in which we choose to surround ourselves with species that benefit us, not just those that, despite us, survive.
363 бумажные страницы
Дата публикации оригинала
2011
Год выхода издания
2011
Издательства
HarperCollins, HarperCollins e-books
Уже прочитали? Что скажете?
👍👎

Цитаты

  • Марицитирует5 лет назад
    Another study found that Crohn’s disease is less common where tuberculosis is more common. It is also more common where it is colder and where days are shorter. But a correlation between two things is no guarantee that one causes the other.
  • Марицитирует6 лет назад
    But we also share most of our traits and genes with fruit flies, a fact upon which modern genetics depends for its succor and funding. We even have many genes in common with most bacteria, genes that exist in each of our cells.

На полках

fb2epub
Перетащите файлы сюда, не более 5 за один раз