Talking In Obscurity, "A Heart That Works" by Rob Delaney

 

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We're back after a little, okay, a long break. The point is Steven, and I are here for you. To help you get into a new book. What book? "A Heart That Works," by Rob Delaney. It is quite possibly one of the saddest things ever. Not just books. THINGS!

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Author's Website: https://www.robdelaney.com/

Talking In Obscurity, "Human Errors," by Nathan H. Lents

 

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Today Obscurists, I've tricked Steven into reading one of my favorite books on biology and how, well, it could be better. Nathan H. Lents has managed to write a hilarious book on human biology. 

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Author's Website: https://thehumanevolutionblog.com/

"Human Errors" by Nathan H. Lents--Nonfiction Review

Today my dear obscurists, we’re talking about biology! Don’t worry, it’ll be more fun than it seems because “Human Errors” by Nathan H. Lents is an awesome book.

What I love about this book:

I re-read a lot of fiction, and not so much when it comes to nonfiction titles, but I’ve probably read “Human Errors” three or four times now—it’s that good. This book is so good, in my opinion, because it transcends just being informative about a topic I find interesting, the biology of the human body, and is genuinely funny. There is not a chapter in it that you won’t be entertained if you randomly flip to it. Lents’s writing is smoothly consistent from start to finish in that regard.

Once you start viewing the world from this book’s lens of the human body is just one big pile of “eh, close enough” biological engineering, you start seeing our bodies’ limitations that are frankly arbitrary. For instance, open your hand and have it palm up. Now have it face down, easy, right? Bet you can even make it go a little further than just straight up or just straight down. Look how flexible you are. But why can’t you make it go all the way around? Wouldn’t a ball joint where our hands could just rotate on—be way more flexible? Oh, and this up-down thing with the hand? Try it with your foot, and you’ll break your ankle. In fact, a lot of our bones in our wrists don’t actually do anything other than float there and get shittier with age.

It isn’t just our suboptimal form, but how our guts function too is often bizarrely inefficient. For instance, humans are terrible at making their own vitamins—unlike most other animals, it turns out. As every desperately poor person has found out since the dawn of civilization—people need a wide and rich variety of food in their diet to stand any chance of having decent health. We’re prone to a panoply of illnesses brought on by poor nutrition without that variety. And yet—consider human’s best friend—the dog. Dogs can eat the same dog food day-in, day-out without complaint their entire lives and never get rickets or scurvy.

What I don’t love about this book:

It’s hard to come up with things I don’t love about this book—there is my ever continuing petty complaint that the chapters are all long, but there is no bite there because they all feel like twenty minutes to me.

The only thing I picked up on—is that Lents seems to be a bit hard on vegans and vegetarians when nutrition comes up. And sure, some nutrients are harder to come by in an entirely plant-based diet, but it isn’t like the solutions in the modern era aren’t plentiful. Either because people have far more access to fruits and vegetables in a greater variety than what can be grown locally, or there are supplements that make up the shortfalls. Also, it isn’t like meat is the be-all-end-all health food for us—which makes sense when you consider that our ancestors rarely ate meat, but only because we’re naturally not great hunters. We lack the physical traits to be great at the activity, and the skills to be a successful hunter are hard-learned, whereas most animals have an instinct for the activity. 

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Author’s Website: https://thehumanevolutionblog.com/

Parting thoughts:

Evolution is thought of—wrongly—as a process of adaptation for improvements’ sake. Often there is a villain in a sci-fi monologuing about how they and their people are the next steps in human evolution. But what evolution is, is over the great gulf of time, an aggregate of the genetic traits which have survived. Sometimes those traits are useful, but that isn’t actually a given.

Returning to a prior topic, the phrase “Ye scurvy dog” is especially ironic because dogs don’t get scurvy—well, at least in normal circumstances. So long as they eat and all of their organs function correctly, their bodies make all the vitamin C they will ever need. Our body has all the same machinery to do the same trick, but we lack one key enzyme, which renders the process useless. Why? Because in the distant past, a common ancestor, who was apparently prolific in spreading their genes, had a busted gene that controls this process.

So why didn’t natural selection naturally select this out of us before we all inherited the bum trait of only being close to capable of creating our own vitamin C? Well, again, and this is a difficult concept for people, but evolution doesn’t actually design anything. Not on purpose, at least. Purpose implies a conscious designer who makes choices. Whereas in this case, how adaptation and evolution work is through the mistake. When any animal reproduces sexually, its offspring typically will inherit all of its genetic traits from its parents. The DNA is all dutifully copied, and voila, that’s how traits are passed down from parent to child. But, every so often, there is a mistake in that copy, which manifests as a new genetic trait—and that trait is often cancer—and that organism dies. But sometimes, that trait is just benign or helpful. And after millions of years of this, the differences are profound.

Not being able to manufacture your own vitamin C versus being able to seems like a significant disadvantage. Why wouldn’t the ones that could produce this vitamin be more successful? Well, you must consider the birthplace of humanity—along the equator—in about the north of Africa. What do you also find there in the world? A lot of fruit which has high concentrations of Vitamin C. So, we all have this problem, because back in the day, it just didn’t matter all that much. Assuming you continued to live near a source of the vitamin.

Micro Mention "The Addictive Brain"

Addictions come in many forms—often, they have tragic consequences on our lives or maybe the lives of our friends and families. In this course by The Great Courses, "The Addictive Brain," lectured by Thad A. Polk, there is great insight to be had about why we become addicted.

This is one of those topics I find everyone has an opinion on, informed or not. Often it's lumped in with a discussion about low-income housing or welfare, again, informed or not. Typically, it gets oversimplified to "well, just don't do it, and you won't get addicted." But one of the things I learned in this course is how the mechanisms of addiction are far more nuanced and complicated, which means that simple solutions don't actually cut it.  

"No One Cares About Crazy People" by Ron Powers--Nonfiction Review

“No One Caes About Crazy People” by Ron Powers is informative—often disturbing—and nonfiction, making it all the more pointedly sad. In this book, Powers tells the story of mental illness in America in more ways than one.

What I love about this book:

This book is a fearless and candid look not just at how poorly mental illness is handled nationwide but what our collective neglect looks like on an individual level. Powers gives you the history of how the mentally ill were treated globally, domestically in the United States, and finally, what that looked like for his sons, who both struggled with schizophrenia. One of which, sadly, did not survive his struggles with depression and schizophrenia. That’s what makes this book so brave. He invites the world into his home, to his family—and to their pain.

The title of this book is an actual quote from a government official, and it’s a perfect distillation of a pure lack of empathy. She wasn’t saying it to lament the idea that there isn’t enough care and consideration for the mentally ill—it was a statement of she—and how she perceived the rest of us feel about the mentally ill. That’s why Powers made that statement the title of this book because it’s revolting. No matter how functionary or bureaucratic one’s job is—if they hold such opinions and are employed by the government, a light needs to be shined on them—for that is how we start to chase the cockroaches out.

Powers gets right into the nitty-gritty details of mental illness—primarily schizophrenia—he talks about the medications, the treatments, the biology, the pain, and most of all, the stories of its sufferers and their families. It’s a hard subject. But one that can strike anyone.  

Reading about the wrenching injustices, which sometimes, and often, led to the deaths of mentally ill people, while not enjoyable, I feel it is vital. For change to happen, discomfort is necessary. Powers includes a story where a mentally unstable person was shot to death while brandishing a screwdriver. It was said to be an icepick, but it was a screwdriver, and while that individual needed to be dealt with—I hardly believe bullets were the only or even the best option.  

What I don’t love about this book:

One of this book’s greatest strengths to credibility is Ron Power’s lived experience with both of his sons’ illnesses. However, I feel, out of the catharsis of writing down his lived experience and the tragedy of losing his son, the book strays a bit too far into the memoir. I don’t know what it’s like to lose a son, and I hope I never do—and this critique is hard to write, but still, I feel valid.

Mostly, and this isn’t the book’s fault—but the subject matter—I’m really wearied by the world when I read about such apathy. It’s a reminder that people of excellent mental and physical health often just don’t care. Really, the mental health crisis in America is just another symptom of the greater generalized health crisis in America. The rich may get the best care in the world, but everyone else needs to either risk bankruptcy or agonize over incredibly convoluted health insurance.

The mentally ill just have it worse because of the lack of promising programs and facilities to meet their needs, and the ones that do exist—could be better—is a vast understatement. So I don’t love how sad and angry this book makes me, but sad and angry is what is needed for things to get better.

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Author's Website: http://www.noonecaresaboutcrazypeople.com/

Parting thoughts:

This is another one of those books that reinforces the idea in my mind that the greatest evil of our day isn’t malice or even hate, but simply not caring. Apathy is the root because it allows all of the other ills, such as hate, racism, greed, et cetera, to run unchecked. The cliché is—and I’m paraphrasing—when good people do nothing, evil triumphs. I would also offer that they also aren’t all that good for standing by and doing nothing.

We live in a world, unlike anything our ancestors ever knew. The poorest of us can often still find a way to communicate across the oceans with other people—instantly. Two hundred years ago, that wasn’t even a power the mightiest of kings and queens dreamed was possible. As a species, we taught ourselves to fly in the air, and less than seventy years later, we landed on the surface of the moon. So the idea that it isn’t within our collective power, from a monetary or technological standpoint, to care for the most vulnerable amongst us isn’t just archaic—It’s ludicrous.

I think the first step in solving our societal ills is—much like how we lost our respect for and love of kings—we need to stop worshiping our modern-day demigods, the billionaires. No one should have that much power. 

At the time of this writing, a gallon of gasoline in Pennsylvania costs, on average, $3.13. Google cheerfully informs me that, at a perfect conversion—and I get that’s impossible in the real world—a gallon of gas produces thirty-six kilowatt-hours. A human on a specialized treadmill can generate one kilowatt-hour in five hours. So a billion dollars can work out to, rounding down, to 319 million gallons of gasoline, which converts to 11.4 billion kilowatt-hours, or about 6.5 million years on that treadmill—and Elon Musk has 169 times that—again, rounding down!

And I get it—the world is a complicated and often overwhelming place to live in. But it is the only place we got. So my most salient piece of advice is; if someone suggests, or if you happen to think “who cares” about someone’s or something’s pain. That’s wrong.

Talking In Obscurity, "The Panic Virus," by Seth Mnookin

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We're back, folks! After a long hiatus, Steven and I are here to talk about books again. And after such a long break due to a pandemic, what should we talk about? Something with "virus" right in the name. That's the Talking in Obscurity guarantee; never read the room.

But seriously, it's a nonfiction book about the "do vaccines cause autism" debate. Short answer: no. 

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Author's Website: http://sethmnookin.com/

Micro Mention "Nine Pints"

So let’s talk about something red! Blood! I’ve got some, you’ve got some, I’d like some more… anyway, moving on “Nine Pints,” by Rose George is a fascinating deep-dive look into the liquid of life, and you should read it.

What I like about this book is it's a high-level and all-around look at the subject. So you get some history on technology involving blood, from leeches to transfusions, and explanations of its bodily function, especially when something is wrong, like during a blood-specific illness.

This book also corrected a misconception I had, and I'd bet a lot of people have as well. I was so used to referring to leeches as such an anachronistic medical practice that it made for a great metaphor for why I thought someone's opinions were backward. However, it turns out that there is still such a thing as medical-grade leeches because there are just some things they can do involving blood that is just better than any other medical treatment. So take that past smug Kevin! You'll just have to find another way to be insufferable.

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Author's Website: https://www.rosegeorge.com/

Micro Mention "The Good Nurse"

Need to go to the hospital? Hope you get a good nurse… not like in "The Good Nurse" by Charles Graeber. But if you've got a ken for true crime and want to scare yourself silly, you know, on top of everything else, then this is your next read.

This book was especially troubling for me because I live in the area around where these hospitals are, that this serial killer worked at, so you know, now that's on my mind. It really makes that trip to the hospital all the more special. That aside, it's a fascinating read, in that morbid sort of way.

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Author's Website: https://www.charlesgraeber.com/

Micro Mention "No One Cares About Crazy People"

I cannot even begin to imagine how difficult it must have been for Ron Powers to write this book—but I am very glad that he did, and can't thank him enough. I hope one day it can be said that most people care about crazy people.

This book is a deeply personal book for Mr. Powers as both of his sons suffered from mental illness, one of which sadly lost his battle with depression. It is as moving a book as it is stark, underscoring the anguish of the mentally ill under the inadequate systems in place for their care here in the United States. The most shocking and troubling thing captured by this nonfiction is outlined by its title, which is the appalling indifference toward sufferers of poor mental health. 

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Author's Website: http://www.noonecaresaboutcrazypeople.com/

"Do No Harm," by Henry Marsh--Nonfiction Review

BRAINS! We’re talking about brains in this review, and how delicious they are, and how neurosurgeons fix them—yep—nothing else. Nailed it Kevin, perfect way to start a new year of reviews. Today’s book “Do No Harm” is by Dr. Henry Marsh, a neurosurgeon.   

What I love about this book:

So if you go back through this blog for the last year, you’ll notice I show a great interest in medicine—to drill down even further, I’m especially fascinated by neurosurgery and psychology. Dr. Henry Marsh is a neurosurgeon, and to put it the most succinctly, I love this book “Do No Harm” because he gives you a first-hand account of what it is like to be a top neurosurgeon.

Marsh’s style of writing is direct and to the point. He does use medical jargon throughout the text—in fact, he starts almost every chapter with an arcane medical term, but he almost always explains it in language and metaphors easy to grasp. It’s a remarkably accessible book for anyone, no matter how much prior knowledge you might have about the medical profession. 

There is an awesomeness to neurosurgery that Marsh captures in his straightforward explanations, and I mean that in the old sense, to inspire awe. When he discusses what it’s like as he ventures into someone’s skull with his microscopes and probes, he makes the experience sound like entering a cathedral—and in a way, it is. The human brain is still the most complex and intricate object that we can study, and the fact that it is the living organ that makes a person, well a person, makes it all the more profound. 

Also, in this book, Marsh describes his experiences with Soviet medicine when he consulted in Ukraine right after the collapse of the Soviet Union. This is an intriguing—albeit morbid—look at medicine under the Soviets, which, to put it mildly from Marsh’s experiences, was bleak. Despite the propaganda, cutting-edge medical research wasn’t really something the Soviets bothered themselves with while they focused on weapons to compete with the west. I’m sure an uncountable number of people suffered as a result.  

What I don’t love about this book:

I will warn you about this book; it goes into the minute and exquisite details of what goes on in neurosurgery. Normally, I’m not a squeamish person. In my personal life, I write cosmic horror that roots around in the theme of body horror, after all. That being said, Marsh is so precise in his explanations that a few times, he even got to me. So if you’re like me—an audiobook person—best not to listen to this book over lunch, especially if you’re eating anything that can be described as “gooey.”

A big problem with large hospitals that this book discusses is the disconnect between doctors and the rest of the staff that works there. It’s certainly not reassuring that people in the life-saving business are also engaged in constant petty bureaucratic squabbles with management. Not a fun thing to learn, but I guess necessary to know.  

Having read multiple books about medicine and doctors’ memoirs about their careers, including multiple neurosurgeons, I can tell you they all have one thing in common; they all have sad bits. No one likes to feel sad—well, almost no one—but I find that sadness has a way of making a story all the more profound. So while I like most people don’t like feeling sad, I think it’s an essential quality in these books. 

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Parting thoughts:

I think that I’m so fascinated with neurosurgeons and their lives because the human mind, for even the most ardent materialist, is something akin to a soul. It is where we all live in the end.

As someone who spends a lot of time in his own head, when I consider all the things that can go wrong with this three-pound mass of quivering meat, and that could irrevocably change who and what that person is—I’m equally repulsed and intrigued. Of all the medical conditions, I fear the most, stroke, memory loss, and mental illness in general rank as my highest fears. It’s one of the reasons I’m always monitoring myself and insist on keeping my mind engaged every single day. 

From all my adventures of reading about the subject, there is just so much we still don’t know about how the brain works. Again—it is the most complicated structure that is also self-aware, that we know of, and teasing out its mysteries is the work of generations. We know several things about the brain’s fundamentals in the area of neurotransmitters and how synapses and so forth work. But how consciousness arises from this complex network of cells and brain structures is still opaque. The best it’s been described to me is consciousness just seems to be an emergent property of complexity. What I take that to mean is: if you make a network sufficiently complex, eventually, conscious thought will emerge. That’s where the ever-popular simile of the brain as a kind of computer comes from, but there are problems with that concept. 

Computers—for now—don’t really evolve physically as in change physical components. There is such a thing as software that evolves, but that’s a different subject. The hardware is still designed, and with each generation, that hardware is improved by its designers. Brains, however, have gone through that evolutionary process, just like every other body structure. Evolution doesn’t necessarily always make improvements. It’s just a process that determines traits based on what survives. It’s incredible that they’re so complex and work the way they do, but trying to understand them is like trying to reverse engineer a river and then build that exact river, a billion years removed. Then, to realize that each of them is a custom job makes the concept that much more daunting. On top of all of that, it’s probably more like a billion rivers tied together in an intricate pattern that beggars the imagination to come up with words to describe them.

So yeah—we don’t really know how brains work from a macro point of view. We just know a lot of little things about how they work.

"The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks," by Rebecca Skloot--Nonfiction Review

While we all have vaccines on the mind, I thought for this review we’d talk about a book about one of the lesser-known figures of medical history. All though unknowingly, she contributed to the development of the polio vaccine and so—so much more. Today’s book is Rebecca Skloot’s “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.” 

What I love about this book:

What really captured my interest in this story was the whole concept of what HeLa cells are in the first place. They’re the oldest human immortal cell line taken from a woman named Henrietta Lacks, actually from her cervical cancer. Immortal is a loaded word but what it means in this context is the line never dies out due to old age. Given the proper environment and sustenance, they’ll continue to divide and grow forever, which is unlike normal human cells that can only divide a set number of times before the line—well—disintegrates is the quickest way to explain it. Think about that for a second, actual human material that never suffers the deleterious effects of aging—what a wild concept! 

I loved learning the medical history and Henrietta’s family history simultaneously, and it’s an approach I immensely appreciated. The HeLa immortal cell line has given us so much in the way of medical breakthroughs, but Skloot shines a light on the actual person where they came from and the cost in mental anguish it took on her family. 

This book explains the history of how boons to society, like Jonas Salk’s polio vaccine, relied on rigorous testing that used HeLa cells. Unquestionably, the polio vaccine was a good thing, and many other advances also utilized HeLa cells, but all of these things were possible thanks to one woman, who was left out of the history books for the most part. Addressing that blind spot in medical history is one of the best parts of this book. 

Deborah, Henrietta’s daughter, by the way, is a trip. Her manic energy, when assisting and sometimes hindering Skloot with this story, adds a whole human dimension to this nonfiction about a topic that could have been presented incredibly dry. She is the human face of the source from which the medical breakthrough of the HeLa cells sprang. The most poignant thing Deborah says in this book is, “…but I always have thought it was strange, if our mother cells done so much for medicine, how come her family can’t afford to see no doctors? Don’t make no sense…”  

What I don’t love about this book:

I’m not typically one for when a biographer inserts themselves in their subjects’ lives, and if you’re one of those as well, this is one of those books. It’s a very minor quibble for me, though, because ultimately, I feel that the aspects of the book that involve Deborah would have lost a lot of power had Skloot not explained their often tumultuous working relationship and Skloot’s interactions with the rest of the family.

In the vein of things I don’t like about the world that this book addresses, and absolutely needed to be included—it’s icky to find out how poorly Johns Hopkins dealt with Henrietta’s family and legacy. They’ve since improved in this area—so that’s nice. 

Still, if it weren’t for Skloot, Henrietta’s family probably would have continued to languish in scientific ignorance, imagining the absolute worst Dr. Frankenstein-esque experiments being conducted on their family member. No one really took the time to explain exactly what the HeLa cells were to these people, and without a properly scientific understanding, some of them believed that in some way, Henrietta, the person was still alive. Alive and being tortured by doctors and scientists. If you can’t see why that is heartbreaking, I don’t know how to explain empathy to you. The fact that this went on for decades compounds the horror, and if I were a member of that family, I wouldn’t be a huge fan of Johns Hopkins or doctors, either.

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Author's Website: http://rebeccaskloot.com/

Parting thoughts:

Ultimately, I believe that ethics, as applied to medicine, was the theme that resonated the most with me in this book. It often isn’t easy to know the right path, and “the greater good” can sometimes blind us to individuals’ real pain and suffering.

I haven’t mentioned it earlier in this review, but I’m sure if you’ve seen the cover of the book, you’ve realized that Henrietta Lacks was black. It’s impossible—to me, at least—to not conclude that a certain amount of why her family was treated so poorly was simple racism. It may have been unconscious, or conscious, who knows what’s in the heart of people. But it’s inescapable to me that if these cells really came from some white lady named Helen, and yes, they did try to give HeLa a white-sounding source name at one point, things would have been different.

In my broader point about ethics, my point is: what is wrong to do to one group of people is just as wrong for any other group of people. Maybe I can be accused of being overly Kantian in my ethical thinking here, given the medical breakthroughs made possible through the HeLa cells. However, I still believe people should know what parts of their bodies are being used for, even cancerous growths. 

I think it’s crucial to qualify here that I agree with Skloot’s point that the study of cell cultures is absolutely necessary for medical and scientific progress. Still, there is a right way to obtain those materials, though, and that is through informed consent.

"The Collected Schizophrenias," by Esmé Weijun Wang--Nonfiction Review

This Friday, we’re talking about an illuminating book, one part collection of essays, and one part memoir about living with mental illness. “The Collected Schizophrenias” by Esmé Weijun Wang is a sometimes uncomfortable but necessary book written by a woman who lives with schizophrenia. 

What I love about this book:

This book had to take an immense amount of internal fortitude and external support to write. From my admittedly dim understanding of the disease, schizophrenia has to be one of the most all-time difficult conditions to deal with and stay out of an institution. For Wang to put her experiences, and the experiences of others like her, down into writing for random idiots—he said with self-awareness—to read and comment on it took bravery. I wish I knew I was capable of something similar myself, and I admire her immensely for this act of courage.

Wang expresses her thoughts and feelings in her own words, and since you all should know I obviously “read” the audiobook, you should know she also narrates the book—all of this makes the experience that much more powerful. She allows you to experience the horror and alienation of having your mind turn in on itself in an unhealthy way vicariously. If you’re like me and don’t have to experience mental illness regularly, it should make you appreciate your own mental health all the more.

Clearly knowledgeable about the topic, since it’s her lived experience, Wang takes the time to break down the features, variables, and variants of mental illness. She describes the types of medications and treatments there are, and while not an exhaustively comprehensive list of the subject, this book is an excellent introduction to this branch of medicine from the patient’s point of view. 

Though there is a lot of pain and suffering, while listening to Wang’s stories, there are also lighter moments, moments of understanding, and acceptance. Her stories about her time volunteering at the summer camp for children with bipolar disorder, especially resonated with me. Before going, she describes how she didn’t “like” children, mainly because she didn’t allow herself to out of fear that engaging with them might awaken a maternal instinct in her that she didn’t want. But she does go, and even outside of her comfort zone, she manages to do a lot of good. Wang went above and beyond for some of those kids, especially with one boy who didn’t fit in well, even when that task was sometimes a bit thankless.

What I don’t love about this book:

So this is a challenging section to write for this book. I’m not going to be over here like, “I just didn’t feel that her pain was all that bad or explained well enough.” Because that would make me a human monster. Instead, I will talk about aspects of the world that I don’t love that unfortunately needed to be addressed in this book.

My first disappointment was with how well Yale historically dealt with students suffering from mental illness. Spoilers, If Wang’s experiences can be used as a yardstick—not well. It would not surprise me if that’s still the case given how well many institutions of higher learning deal with sexual assault, again, not well. 

Furthermore, the Yale thing is really just a symptom of a larger problem within society, and that’s our apathy toward the mentally ill and disturbed. This is a point better captured by Ron Powers, “No One Cares About Crazy People,” another book related to this topic, than I can do justice here in a blog post. However, its apathy which leads to repeated misunderstandings and mismanagement of people who are legitimately suffering daily, just trying to keep up with the rat race of everyday life.  

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Author's Website: https://esmewang.com/ 

Parting thoughts:

I believe that a certain amount of our apathy as a society toward the mentally ill stems from another problem we all share more and more. We don’t empathize well with each other.

The world is a vastly complex place, so-much-so it’s often baffling to just one person. It’s drilled into us that the strong survive and the weak don’t. This messaging starts early, too, with kids. This is so prevalent that it sounds radical and new, even today when someone points out that in the wealthiest country in the world at the most technologically sophisticated time in human history—it doesn’t need to be this way. And the solution is deceptively simple, we need to start caring more for each other to work together to solve the problems we all face. 

Empathy is a newer kind of feeling for us as a species. People get the ascendency of humankind all wrong, in my opinion. It wasn’t our thumbs, or our application of brutality, or even our frankly overrated intelligence that built our world. Empathy is what allowed us to cease traveling around in small groups, killing each other on sight, for nearly a hundred thousand years—and trade tools. Then in time, language and stories, until one day we could tell ourselves a story that we were really all the same group of people, and we built the first villages.  

We all share the surface of this rock, hurtling through space, and one day it will likely be necessary for us to journey beyond it to survive long term. But before that, we should really take the time to learn how to care for each other first.

"The Panic Virus," by Seth Mnookin--Nonfiction Review

Someone alert Jenny and let’s get our never-ending controversy gloves on because this Friday, in this non-fiction review, we’re talking about “The Panic Virus” by Seth Mnookin. A book about the anti-vaccine movement and a topic that a lot of people feel passionately about, myself included.

I should state right now that I believe in the efficacy of vaccines, and don’t feel that the science supports a link between vaccines and the onset of autism, despite anecdotal evidence. If that’s going to be too troubling for you to read further, I apologize and respect that—and hey, we’ll be talking fiction next week.   

What I love about this book:

Seth Mnookin starts off his book with a real-life human story about a young family whose son gets desperately ill. The boy had contracted Haemophilus Influenza type b, aka Hib, because he never got a critical vaccine as a child. In some cases, a Hib infection can cause a child’s windpipe to close up, and they suffocate to death. This child had to be rushed to Children’s Hospital in Pittsburgh and nearly died. It’s a visceral story and immediately tugs at emotional heartstrings, which could be viewed as manipulative if you didn’t believe the rest of the science behind the book.

I like this approach because it contests anti-vaxxers on the same argumentative turf they’re used to arguing on and has the virtue of science behind the argument. The various anti-vaccination movements don’t have any respected medical professionals on their side, nor do they have any credible evidence or studies. What they do have is anecdotal evidence from similar experiences brought together via the internet. They leverage this to appeal emotionally to those they are making their arguments to—and it works because people often believe things simply because it feels true, and not because of sterile medical facts, which is dangerous when we’re talking about life-saving medicine.

All that said, Mnookin doesn’t paint these parents of autistic children as stupid—or even money-grubbing lowlifes trying to make a buck through litigation. I appreciate this approach because autism is a tragic mental disorder for both the child who has it and the parents. With even a modicum of empathy, anyone should be able to understand why a parent would seek out and latch on to anything that can explain their child’s disorder.

The book also gives an excellent history of medicine on this topic, going back to Andrew Wakefield—a former British physician—and his paper published in the Lancet, which ultimately became an embarrassment to the medical journal. Andrew Wakefield also was eventually discredited and struck off the medical register.

Mnookin also examines how this topic took on a life of its own as a dangerous anti-vaccination movement, led by non-medical professionals, like Jenny McCarthy. Whose fame and famous connections, such as Oprah, gave her a tremendous platform to influence other grief-stricken people into believing something that simply isn’t supported by the scientific consensus.           


What I don’t love about this book:

As I’ve grown older, I’ve become more liberal as a person. My guiding star is if it’s not hurting anyone, people should have the freedom to do whatever it is they desire, so long as everyone involved are consenting adults. I’m uninterested in telling people how they should live, or listening to others prescribe how people should live, which is why the current incarnation of the Republican party in the United States alienates me. When it comes to this topic, not vaccinating your children doesn’t meet my standard of “if it’s not hurting anyone.” Other than the obvious argument that it’s hurting your child, it’s also hurting everyone else’s children unintentionally, by reducing herd immunity and allowing diseases such as measles to make a comeback. This argument is scientifically accurate, which is the closest thing we can come to as agreed-upon truth. You can reference this book for all the medical professionals who make that very argument. Additionally, I believe that the current Republican party expresses the greatest number of unscientific beliefs, which are dangerous in health and governing.

That all beings said, I find the author’s digressions into attacking the Republican party in this book to be distracting at best. I do agree with him on a lot of those points, but it isn’t like there aren’t liberal crystal healing believers out there that believe, wholeheartedly, that vaccines are poison. If the author wanted to discuss how conservatives in America have adopted anti-science views, that’s fine, but it should have been its own book—and not snarky little jabs in this one. My reason for this is any perception of bias, breeds suspicion, and creates an opening to discount everything else in the book. The topic of are vaccines life-saving medicine or are they poison that causes autism in children—is too important a topic to be divided on the table of Republican ideals vs. Democrat ideals. This isn’t something we, as a society, can treat as there are no wrong answers here. There are absolutely wrong answers here, and people’s lives are on the line. 


Parting thoughts:

Watching a child descend into autism has to be one of the all-time greatest hellish scenarios. To see your son or daughter make progress, just like any other child, then to one day stop making eye-contact and lose verbal skills, and in the more profound cases to become nearly entirely mentally disabled is the stuff of nightmare.

I pride myself on being a scientifically minded person and would like to believe even if faced with such a trial that I’d hold to that value. But I’m not a hundred percent certain that I would if I lived that experience, and it’s why I’m uncomfortable with people calling out anti-vaxxers as crazy, via meme or otherwise. They aren’t all stupid, and people aren’t perfect, often we form opinions internally based on emotion and nothing else.

Sadly it’s very easy to flippantly call someone a nutjob, especially when you don’t have a kid that has autism. Sure their arguments don’t hold up to scientific scrutiny but think about how hard it would be to hear, “well, we don’t really know why your son/daughter has this condition, and there is very little chance for improvement,” right after getting your child vaccinated. That association is right there—but as the famous phrase goes—correlation does not imply causation. It’s easy to remember, but it flies in the face of all our human instincts, and instincts have served us well for countless thousands of years—until you get to the modern era, where they aren’t designed to operate.

Our ancestors could look at a bush, see the leaves rustle, and then a lion would pop out and eat their cousin. That day forward, they’d see leaves rustle and high tail it, teach their children to high tail it in that situation, and survive, never realizing that ninety-nine percent of the time the leaves rustle because the wind was blowing. Living in the modern world is a lot like that cranked up, but now there are a lot of situations where simple avoidance without understanding, won’t help you, it can actually harm you, or kill you and your loved ones. The only defense is gaining knowledge, and part of acquiring new understanding is finding out that our human intuition isn’t very good at all—it was just good enough to keep us alive in a primitive environment. Add a little complexity, and our instincts become nothing more than dangerously un-thought out predispositions.