Book Review: Survival Of The Sickest With Jonathan Prince

1. Title and Author- Survival of the Sickest by Dr. Sharon Moalem with Jonathan Prince

2. Why I chose this book- To be quite honest, I had a few books that have been suggested by classmates that I plan on reading over the summer. I ordered them all on Amazon, and this was the first one to arrive.

3. Synopsis of the book- Chapter one focused on hemochromatosis, a genetic disorder where iron builds up in your body. Though hemochromatosis can be fatal, they think there could be some benefits to it, and that there is a reason why it has been passed on for so many generations. Bacteria feed on iron. When a macrophage (part of the immune system) takes bacteria in the blood and sends it to the lymph nodes to be processed by the immune system. There the bacteria feeds on the iron in the macrophages and multiplies. In a person with hemochromatosis, their macrophages are iron deficient. So when people with

Epigenetics is the study of chemical reactions and what can influence them. This means environmental factors that affect the mother’ genes or even the father and grandmother genes can affect the offspring’s genetics. Moalem gave the example of obesity. A fetus might detect the mother’s malnourished habits and the genes to store fat might be turned on. The fetus’s body will store fat more efficiently which could be a cause to the western world’s obesity epidemic. Moalem also touched on the subject of the Human Genome Project which was a six month worldwide research project where scientist mapped out the sequence of chemical based pairs that makeup human DNA and all the genes of the human genome from both a physical and functional standpoint.

Chapter 8 focused on Elaine Morgan challenging the Savannah theory and supporting the aquatic ape theory instead. There are many claims that support the aquatic ape theory like:

Humans have fat attached to their skin (most land mammals do