Dr. Sharon Moalem is the lead author of a book called Survival of the Sickest. According to his website, Sharon Moalem got his Ph.D. "in the emerging fields of neurogenetics and evolutionary medicine from the University of Toronto." He now works at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City (USA).It looks like a fascinating book (not).
This revelatory book explains how, especially when you take the evolutionary long-view, many diseases are really complicated blessings, not simple curses. Survival of the Sickest answers the riddles behind many diseases that seem to be inexplicably wired into our genetic code, starting with the biggest riddle of them all: If natural selection is supposed to get rid of harmful genetic traits, why are hereditary diseases so common?Sharon Maolem has a blog and I was attracted to it today when he linked to my article on the Central Dogma of Molecular Biology. Here's what he says today about junk DNA [Please Take the Junk Out of DNA].
Through a fresh and engaging examination of our evolutionary history, Dr. Sharon Moalem reveals how many of the conditions that we think of as diseases today actually gave our ancestors a leg up in the survival sweepstakes. When the option is a long life with a disease or a short one without it, evolution opts for the long ball every time.
Survival of the Sickest explores earth, history, and the human genome to discover how environmental, cultural, and genetic differences shaped us through evolution and continue to play an active role in our health today.
I still cringe whenever I see someone refer to parts of genome as junk or junk DNA. What they are talking about really is areas of DNA that we still don’t fully understand what their function might be. The idea of junk came out of the central dogma (this is not some Politburo manifesto) because some people erroneously believed that if DNA wasn’t used to make a functional protein than it must be like Grandma’s plastic covered couch, junk. Turns out that far from being junk, the really interesting part of our genome may be the part no one really thought to look at which is great for anyone interested in antiques since most of our DNA was previously relegated to the trash bin of evolution.I've started to set him straight over on Dr. Sharon's Blog. In case it doesn't take the first time, some of you might like to continue his education in basic molecular biology. Looks like he'll need it for his second book.
His publicist sent me a review copy of his book. After perusing it briefly, I haven't managed to read beyond the introduction. Maybe I was put off by his subtitle ("A Medical Maverick Discovers Why We Need Disease"). Anyone referring to himself as a "maverick" always causes my skeptical antennae to start twitching, for one thing. For another thing, it became apparent early that he's probably way overselling his point.
ReplyDeleteoh, I liked the book, read it in about a day (it's like freakonomics). the shit on toads that freeze themselves solid was sweet.
ReplyDeleteof course most of it is probably wrong, and there's a lot glossing over places where he lacks evidence, but whatever, it's still fun.
it would probably drive larry insane though--all those possible explanations for things! doesn't he realize it's all neutral drift?! :)
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ReplyDeleteHis post doesn't link to your blog anymore. lol.
ReplyDeleteAnd did you leave a comment? The only one I see is by some ignorant person singing praise.
Yes, I left a comment but it never appeared.
ReplyDeleteI'm doubly disappointed. I read "Survival of the Sickest" and (perhaps naively) thought it had some interesting things to say, only now I wonder if any of it can be trusted. Worse, by refusing to publish Larry's comment, Moalem acts as if he's uninterested or unable to respond to criticism. This makes me trust his intellectual honesty even less.
ReplyDeleteThanks for raising these issues, Larry. If you hadn't, I probably would have continued to trust it.
If any of you lot use Wikipedia, you may be interested in taking a look at this book's entry. It reads like a publisher's press release.
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