Missing Microbes: How The Overuse Of Antibiotics Is Fueling Our M - Softcover

Blaser, Martin

4.17

3,558 ratings by Goodreads

9781443420242: Missing Microbes: How The Overuse Of Antibiotics Is Fueling Our M

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1443420247 ISBN 13: 9781443420242

Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers, 2015

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A critical call to arms about the harmful effects of some of our most revered modern medical practices.

Welcome to the wilds of the microbiome, where for hundreds of thousands of years bacterial and human cells have co-existed in a peaceful symbiosis that is responsible for the equilibrium and health of our bodies. But now this invisible Eden is under assault. Our overreliance on medical advances such as antibiotics and Cesarean sections is threatening the extinction of these irreplaceable microbes and leading to severe health problems.

In Missing Microbes, Dr. Martin Blaser goes back to the discovery of antibiotics, which ushered in a golden age of medicine, and traces how our subsequent overuse of these supposed wonder drugs has left its mark on our systems and contributed to the rise of what Blaser calls our modern plagues: obesity, asthma, allergies, diabetes and certain forms of cancer. Blaser's studies suggest that antibiotic use during early childhood poses the greatest risk to long-term health; alarmingly, American children receive on average seventeen courses of antibiotics before they are twenty years old. His studies also suggest that C-sections deprive babies of important contact with their mothers' microbiomes.

Taking us into the lab to explain his groundbreaking studies, Blaser not only provides elegant support for his theories but guides us toward avoiding even more catastrophic health problems in the future.

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About the Author:

MARTIN J. BLASER, M.D., has studied the role of bacteria in human disease for more than thirty years. He is the director of the Human Microbiome Program at New York University (NYU). He served as the chair of medicine at NYU and the president of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, and he has had major advisory roles at the National Institutes of Health. He cofounded the Bellevue Literary Revue and his work has been written about in The New Yorker, Nature, The New York Times, The Economist, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, among other publications. He has made more than one hundred media appearences, including on the Today show, Good Morning America, The O'Reilly Factor, NPR, the BBC, CBC and CNN. He lives in New York City.

From Booklist:

*Starred Review* You share your body with a vast population of microorganisms. Ten trillion human cells coexist with 100 trillion bacterial cells. The human microbiome—an elaborate ecology of microbes on us and within us—plays a major role in health, especially immunity and metabolism. But this collection of mostly pacifistic and beneficial species of bacteria that coevolved with human beings is increasingly endangered—by excessive use of antibiotics in humans and farm animals, overutilization of antiseptics and sanitizers, and the rising rate of cesarean sections. Blaser, an infectious-disease expert and researcher at NYU, is convinced that the swelling number of people with obesity, asthma, and esophageal reflux is a consequence of disrupting the microbiome. He warns that even short-term use of unnecessary antibiotics in children can have long-term implications. Antibiotics have been available for almost 70 years and have saved countless lives. Surprisingly, however, around 70 percent of antibiotics in use are allotted to livestock to promote growth and fatten them up. Human �microecology is complex, even paradoxical: the bacteria Helicobacter pylori can make folks ill (ulcers and stomach cancer) and keep them well (protection against GERD, asthma, and esophageal cancer). Blaser’s Missing Microbes is a masterful work of preventive health and superb science writing. --Tony Miksanek

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