Survival of the Sickest by Sharon Moalem had actually been on my ‘Books I am Meaning to Read’ list for quite some time.

I learned a great deal reading this book. I had never heard of transposons or “jumping genes” before reading Survival of the Sickest. When I took biology for the first time, my favorite part of the curriculum was the chapters about DNA. I have gone a while thinking that this critical part of each and every one of our cells was stable entity. It was news to me that a large portion of our “junk DNA” that do not code for proteins are made up of jumping genes. I was shocked to learn that our genes have the ability to cut/copy and paste themselves into different parts of the human genome, changing the makeup of who we are whilst we go completely unaware of their actions. Moalem took only a few pages to prove that the Lamarckian concept of the inheritance of acquired traits, and idea that I believed biological blasphemy, has not completely been negated.

The quirky facts the book gave about our behavior were great. I for one used to wonder why I would sneeze when I entered a light area after being in the dark for a period of time, and now I know it is because my ancestors likely lived in caves, and they developed a natural reflex to sneeze upon leaving them in order to clear any dust or debris from their sinuses. I made sure to warn my friends about wearing sunglasses while tanning, as Moalem explained how sunlight needs to hit the optic nerve in order for the pituitary gland to get the signal to produce melanin. These little nuggets of wisdom were some of my favorite parts of the book.

This is not the first time I have read a book like this. My favorite genre of books is non-fiction, and earlier this summer I read the book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Harari. I loved the book, Harari was able to conflate the knowledge we have of history and science into an incredible story that explains who we are as a species, where we came from, and where we are headed. The book started off discussing our ape ancestors who wandered in the african heat, neanderthals whom we vied for supremacy with, and finally the ‘cognitive revolution’, a complete change in our ability to interact and cooperate with one another that truly made us “sapiens”. The book in its later chapters discussed the mapping of the human genome, making it apparent that in just a few years any person can have their genome mapped quickly and cheaply. This will undoubtedly lead to much more effective personalized medicine, potentially increasing the human lifespan by decades. Harari also made sure to highlight some possible negatives of our newfound biological knowledge and power, like the hypothetical future of artificial selection and the creation of “designer babies”. The book sent a clear message to me: we are in the early stages of biological manipulation, and the potential to change our species completely, for better or for worse, is right around the corner.

The idea that natural selection has retained traits in us that are beneficial today but can be harmful in the long run was one that was entirely new to me. I never considered the possible reasons why our many genetic disorders had not been taken care of through thousands of years of evolution, and how Moalem explained it made the whole principle of survival of the fittest make much more sense to me. Why are humans still burdened by hemochromatosis? Because the extra iron allowed them to fend of the bubonic plague. Why does diabetes still worsen the health of millions? Because thousands of years ago, the excess sugar in the bloodstream was able to act like anti-freeze in the extreme cold, exactly what humans needed to survive in the Younger Dryas. Evolution is a give and take process, not entirely beneficial to the organism it modifies, “Just about every adaptation is a compromise of sorts, and improvement in some circumstances, a liability in others”(Moalem 46).The concept of evolution as a whole is clearer to me and just makes a whole lot more sense after reading this book. In the subject of biology, knowledge of evolution is indispensable.