Survival Of The Sickest Essay

Survival of the Sickest is an intriguing novel that explores why we need disease. Moalem asks and answers many questions throughout this book centering on the concept of evolution. His main objective in this book was to explain why natural selection designated certain diseases that are harmful to humans now. Throughout his questioning, he shows us that the reason so many diseases are still around today is because at some point in history, all of them helped our ancestors to survive and reproduce in their environment. Each chapter in his book focuses on a different aspect of his overall conclusion that modern diseases were beneficial in the past. Each topic gave an example and new understanding of evolution. Moalem started out his book

This relates to two of the Big Ideas: Diversity and Unity of life and Evolution. To be more specific: the process of evolution drives the diversity and unity of life. The idea is that over time, because of environmental pressures, a population can change its "genetic makeup" because there are genetic variations within the population itself. Like how the rust disease actually helped people to survive during the black plague days instead of killing them. Another example of the Big Idea, “Unity and Diversity of Life” is when throughout the book, Moalem also describes the ancestry of Dr. Henry Louis Gates, a distinguished African American scholar on the Harvard board of African and African American Studies, to illustrate the genetic intermixing occurring around the world. In the novel, Dr. Henry Louis Gates is shown as an example of how diverse the world is today. The book says, "...some genetic testing revealed that Dr. Gates had no relationship to the slave owner-but fully 50 percent of his genetic heritage was European. Half of his ancestors were white." This shows that traits don't necessarily show the diverseness of a family