Afbeelding auteur

Emily Monosson

Auteur van Blight: Fungi and the Coming Pandemic

5 Werken 127 Leden 4 Besprekingen

Over de Auteur

Emily Monoson is an environmental toxicologist, writer, and consultant. She is an independent scholar at the Ronin Institute and an adjunct professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Monosson authored Evolution in a Toxic World: How Life Responds to Chemical Threats and edited toon meer Motherhood: The Elephant in the Laboratory. toon minder

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How we are changing life, gene by gne
 
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jhawn | 1 andere bespreking | Jul 31, 2017 |
For every pathogen there is a phage

Hiding in plain sight all these years, the microbiome has been providing exciting new paths for discovery, wonderment, and amazement. Looking at the world with new eyes, we can (at last) see that the air, soil and water themselves contain microbiomes, with similarly impressive properties. Natural Defense is the latest addition to the burgeoning shelf of biomic revelations. This one is focused on practical application. It is all about how we can improve ourselves and save our planet from, well, us.

The basic message is that Nature has it handled. We can do better learning from Nature than by creating poisonous chemical compounds by the tens of thousands. Monosson begins with the story of fecal transplants, suddenly in vogue in the West. They seem to cure a wide swath of otherwise unmanageable conditions. Sometimes overnight, after months of antibiotics have failed. The Chinese figured this out a thousand years ago. The FDA is still not convinced, but is tolerating it.

Next up are phages, which target specific pathogens. If we figure out how phages and pathogens line up, we can have an endless cheap supply of tightly targeted miracle meds that have worked, by evolutionary design, for eons.

We have begun trying some of this. We do use sex odors – pheromones, to confuse destructive moths. It saves spraying pesticides on fields, saving fruit crops from becoming worthless almost overnight. With pheromones, it is a matter of milligrams per acre, compared to carpet bombing with pesticides. For some reason, despite the evident, documented success, pheromone treatments have not made a big dent in the market, she says. As with anything in science, acceptance is problematic.

Natural Defense is a most accessible, plainly written briefing on the state of our ignorance and the wonderful vistas opening up to us. As Monosson says in the Epilogue, each chapter could become its own book. Some of those books have been written, and many more are on the way. This is a fine, fast intro.

David Wineberg
… (meer)
 
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DavidWineberg | Mar 25, 2017 |
So if I read a book that talks about super-germs and then feel sick two days later, am I sick or is my imagination overactive? Medical students' disease or the fact that I share a house with someone who was sick last week? Not that rel="nofollow" target="_top">Unnatural Selection by Emily Monossson has anything in it to tell me how hypochondrial I am being. But it does have enough bits and pieces in it to make me feel nervous. And, unlike my last "scientific" book I read, there are references -- almost a quarter of the book in my copy. And no holier-than-thou attitude either.

Yay science!

Except boo people, since, as Unnatural Selection points out, people are doing a lot of stuff that may have unintended long term consequences as weeds, bugs, and germs develop new resistance to our attempts to squash them out, or, in a more intriguing aspect I hadn't know about before, re-activating genes that maybe haven't been used for centuries. So yay evolution, except for the fact that such evolution in our tiny plant and microbe friends will likely screw us over big time in the coming years. At the end of The Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu, when they go see the locusts and talk about how all they've ever tried to do, and here the locusts still are, thriving, unsquashable, unstoppable, yep. Like that. We're screwed.

So what to do, what to do? That isn't really Unnatural Selection's scope, since it isn't a fix-it-up book, but rather a watch-out-your-house-is-caving-in book. It stays scientific; there's no fear-mongering. But I still get sleepy reading books like this, like the problem is so overwhelming that my brain actually starts turning itself off rather than want to keep reading. At the same time, as the book points out, a huge problem is agri-business, which I can affect only a little (buying antibiotic free meat, writing letters to parliament, etc.). But I can't really stop Monsanto from tinkering around to get more herbicide-resistant crops that end up cross-breeding with weeds until the weeds are endemic and resistant to all known herbicides. So then I start to freak out, and the book talks about influenza, and I convince myself I have influenza, and I get even sleepier. I perked up at the third and final chapter on epigenetics, but then the book ends, without even so much as a conclusion, and I was left feeling adrift in a sea of antibiotic, herbicide and pesticide resistant super plants and microbes ready to destroy me. Maybe I'll stay in my house for awhile.

Believable science. No assholery.

Unnatural Selection by Emily Monossson went on sale October 28, 2014.

I received a copy free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.… (meer)
 
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reluctantm | 1 andere bespreking | Jan 25, 2016 |
As a woman in science in the midst of getting my PhD, I really appreciated this book. The lab where I'm doing my field work is staffed almost exclusively by men, and this book was able to lend me some perspective that I very much wanted and otherwise lacked. It uses personal essays from talented female scientists that have had to balance their personal lives and careers. Some speak of sacrifice, others of regret, and all of them talk about compromise. The writers range in through fields and generations: from physiologists in the 70's to geologists in the 80's and marine scientists in the 90's. Personally, it was easy to relate to at least some piece from every essay. I was often heartened by the outcomes and opinions and feelings they shared. I am at the beginning of my own story still, but I couldn't help but worry about starting my own family after my PhD work and if there was ever a good time to do so. I'm greatful for the messages I found here.… (meer)
 
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bookthief | Feb 24, 2010 |

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5
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127
Populariteit
#158,248
Waardering
½ 3.7
Besprekingen
4
ISBNs
18

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