Dr. Sharon Moalem And Jonathan Prince's Survival Of The Sickest

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Disease is considered an horrid word; by definition it is a disorder within an organism which implies it is unwanted and needs to be fixed. However in, Dr. Sharon Moalem and Jonathan Prince’s book, Survival of the Sickest the authors discuss a topic one does not often hear, the benefits of sickness. Diabetes, hemochromatosis, and sickle cell anemia are just a few problems that in the past helped us survive long enough to reproduce.
An estimate of 171 million people have diabetes and that number is expected to double by 2030. Diabetes affects how your body uses glucose. Unmanaged, this can lead to rapid dehydration, coma, and death. However today one can manage diabetes by controlling one’s diet and if necessary taking injections of insulin. …show more content…

Malaria survives on healthy red-blood cells and carriers do not have a lot of healthy red-blood cells. Similarly to how those with hemochromatosis starved the bubonic plague of iron, sickle cell anemia carriers starve malaria of red-blood cells. The proactive effect of malaria only works on those who have one copy of sickle cell anemia and not the actual illness. If one has sickle cell anemia, one is more likely to get malaria. Nonetheless, malaria is such a vicious disease that anything that can aid in the fight against it and towards survival and reproduction is helpful.
Dr. Sharon Moalem and Jonathan Prince’s book, Survival of the Sickest, points out the fact that diseases do not always need to be cured infact beneficial mutations is how we evolve. Although the book mainly discusses how diseases evolve humans, Moalem and Prince do discuss how we, humans shape diseases. By the simple acts of getting and giving mosquito netting, one forces the malaria virus to find a new perhaps less malicious path to survival and reproduction one that may not cure the malaria virus but may make not fatal, similar to the common

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