Disease Can Benefit Life: Survival of the Sickest Book

Survival of the Sickest was an interesting book to read. I say this because Dr. Sharon Moalem discusses how sometimes a certain disease can actually benefit someone’s life. I think that this was the most shocking thing to me because I have one of the diseases discussed in this book and I have never thought of my disease being positive for my quality of life. Even though

In chapter two Dr. Sharon Moalem first discusses how there is a much higher prevalence of Type 1 Diabetes in Northern European countries compared to countries in the south like Asian, African and Hispanic countries.

This is because Dr. Moalem believes there is a connection with the cold and diabetes which makes him start to try to understand how genetics plays a huge factor in the development of diabetes. He talks about how the idea stems from knowing that freezing point for water is lowered when there is excessive sugar in it. I really began to wonder if Dr.

Get quality help now

KarrieWrites

Verified writer

Proficient in: An Interesting Book I Read

5 (339)

“ KarrieWrites did such a phenomenal job on this assignment! He completed it prior to its deadline and was thorough and informative. ”

+84 relevant experts are online

Hire writer

Moalem was correct because the book discussed how a majority of children get diagnosed in the late fall with diabetes and I personally was diagnosed in late November right before Thanksgiving. So, this intrigued me into thinking that Dr. Moalem may have correct reasoning about diabetes being an evolutionary response.

But then he goes on and explains how the Wood Land Frog freezes itself in the Winter by increasing the sugar concentration in its blood and then thaws itself when Spring returns. And this is where I started to get a little angry because in today’s society this could not occur to such a level for diabetics.

The book does state that a doctor also said this was not possible because “Type 1 diabetes would result in severe ketoacidosis and early death” ( Moalem pg. 47). I support this statement and I know this personally because if I forget to put in insulin throughout the day then my blood glucose levels spike and I feel really sick and go into ketoacidosis and could die because my blood turns acidic when there are high glucose levels for an extended period of time. It was frustrating to read how Dr. Moalem seemed to try and connect these two incidences of how the Wood Land Frog will increase sugar concentration in their blood to stay alive but if I tried to do this as a diabetic I would go into ketoacidosis and possibly die.

This chapter also made me feel worse about my disease because Dr. Moalem to me made it seem that diabetics should be grateful for this disease because it was an evolutionary response, but I hate having this disease. There are so many negatives to this disease compared to positives. It is not clear to me if Dr. Moalem believes that diabetes is a good thing that occurred to human nature but I would have to disagree that even though it may be helped humans survive ice ages and cold temperatures that there are various other numerous bad complications from being diagnosed with diabetes and overall a profoundly bad thing.

Even though I could talk about diabetes for numerous pages, diabetes was not the only topic covered in this book. The other attention-grabbing part of this book for me was the chapter about Favism and Fava Beans. Favism is a disease that can be characterized by anemia after the consumption of the fava beans because favism does not have the ability to eliminate free radicals that are made when the consumption of fava beans occurs. Then those free radicals attack red blood cells. This reaction occurs in people who also have a deficiency of the G6PD enzyme.

This can be linked to a genetic gene called G6PD that is responsible for G6PD protein production on the X Chromosome resulting in favism to be more predominant in males. But, it was shown that this genetic deficiency is beneficial because the people who have favism are less likely to be diagnosed with malaria because frankly the blood of someone with a G6PD deficiency is less hospitable for malaria. This is interesting to me because the highest rate of favism is thought the Mediterranean where fava beans are so important to their diet. I can attest to this statement because I studied abroad in Florence, Italy where I had Fava beans in many dishes and I think it would be hard to make sure that one does not eat them since majority of the time the beans were hidden in my pasta sauce. I think it would be interesting to study and find out if there are other ways to make malarial parasites not attracted to the blood of a human other than having a G6PD deficiency.

In this same chapter it states, “Life is such a compromise” (Moalem pg. 87). In this sense the book is discussing how celery produces psoralen to defend itself but psoralen damages the DNA, tissue and causes sensitivity to sunlight but psoralen is only activated when it is in sunlight. This causes a large amount of celery farmers to have skin conditions but when organic farmers do not use pesticide then insects are more susceptible to attack the celery which makes the celery produce more psoralen. So, Dr. Moalem discusses that even though the organic farmers are leaving poison (pesticides) off their plant they are allowing more poison (psoralen) to grow inside the plant. Which brings in the idea of how life is a compromise. I thoroughly enjoyed that part of the book because it made me thing about how many other things in our own lives get compromised and what we choose to do really affect the outcome in our lives.

Overall, this book discusses how life is constantly evolving and the relationship between humans and disease is more multifaceted than people think. After reading this book and learning about the various topics that are related to numerous diseases, such as hemochromatosis and iron, it has made me realize that the world is frequently fluctuating and there is no guarantee of how your body is going to react to the environmental, societal, and genetic factors. So, in conclusion, Dr. Moalem taught me that there may be plenty we do not know about diseases and how those disease evolved but I do know that not every disease is negative and some things are helpful but overall to live my life because life is always generating new things and you never know how our body is going to react.