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The Wild Life of Our Bodies
Rob Dunn
Predators, Parasites, and Partners That Shape Who We Are Today
Harper
July 2011
On Sale: June 21, 2011
304 pages
ISBN: 006180648X
EAN: 9780061806483
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
A biologist shows the influence of wild species on our
well-being and the world and how nature still clings to
us—and always will. We evolved in a wilderness of parasites, mutualists, and
pathogens, but we no longer see ourselves as being part of
nature and the broader community of life. In the name of
progress and clean living, we scrub much of nature off our
bodies and try to remove whole kinds of life—parasites,
bacteria, mutualists, and predators—to allow ourselves to
live free of wild danger. Nature, in this new world, is the
landscape outside, a kind of living painting that is
pleasant to contemplate but nice to have escaped. The truth, though, according to biologist Rob Dunn, is that
while "clean living" has benefited us in some ways, it has
also made us sicker in others. We are trapped in bodies that
evolved to deal with the dependable presence of hundreds of
other species. As Dunn reveals, our modern disconnect from
the web of life has resulted in unprecedented effects that
immunologists, evolutionary biologists, psychologists, and
other scientists are only beginning to understand. Diabetes,
autism, allergies, many anxiety disorders, autoimmune
diseases, and even tooth, jaw, and vision problems are
increasingly plaguing bodies that have been removed from the
ecological context in which they existed for millennia. In this eye-opening, thoroughly researched, and
well-reasoned book, Dunn considers the crossroads at which
we find ourselves. Through the stories of visionaries, Dunn
argues that we can create a richer nature, one in which we
choose to surround ourselves with species that benefit us,
not just those that, despite us, survive.
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