This book presents microbiology as ecology—the study of the natural habitat that is the body, and the tiny creatures that live in it. Each person and animal is an environment unto themselves, an island inhabited by a dazzling diversity of microbes which interact with their host and each other in a complex web of collaboration and competition. The immune system has been imagined as a military border guard attacking all invaders, but it may be more insightful to think of it as a national park service, managing the balance among species and culling only when needed. A macroorganism without its microorganisms isn't clean and healthy, it's a wasteland.
Multicellular life itself evolved from the union of originally single-celled species billions of years ago, and we've been multiplicitous ever since, our bacteria evolving inside us, and us evolving alongside them. Many animals can only develop their normal characteristics in the presence of their microbiome; if raised in sterile conditions, desert woodrats don't develop their special ability to feed on poisonous mesquite trees, and bobtail squid that should be bioluminescent remain dark.
Fair warning if you are prone to existential crises, this book might give you one. What does it mean to be one? If you can't function without your internal ecosystem of billions of creatures, in what sense are you separate from them? We can't even point to the genome as the marker of distinction, as genetic material from ancient strains of bacteria can pass into the host organism's cells and become part of its DNA. The book explores the possibility that the borders of biological individuality are blurrier than we imagine, and suggests that what we see as one person or one animal is in some sense an emergent phenomenon.
Yong's writing is clear and vivid, with good use of figurative language that gets his point across without overdoing it. He gives ample attention to the scientific process and the people who do the research, from the early development of microscopy in the 17th century through to innovative bacterial manipulations that prevent mosquitos from transmitting viruses in the present day. He's also skilled at navigating the controversies and unknowns of microbial medicine. There can be a lot of "woo" and breathless hype around things like probiotics and (yikes) fecal transplantation, but Yong is always careful to be evenhanded and manage expectations.
One area where he could have been more thoughtful about his presentation is in discussing claims that probiotics can "cure" autism and obesity. He is clear that these claims are overblown and medically irresponsible, and I wouldn't say he endorses the implication that neurodivergence is bad and all fat people need to lose weight, but I wish he had done more to explicitly challenge it.
He does a better job of sensitively handling the range of human differences in his later book An Immense World—which is what you'd hope for! I do think An Immense World clearly shows six years of Yong's growth as a writer and a journalist, but I Contain Multitudes is also an excellent book and well worth reading.
Multicellular life itself evolved from the union of originally single-celled species billions of years ago, and we've been multiplicitous ever since, our bacteria evolving inside us, and us evolving alongside them. Many animals can only develop their normal characteristics in the presence of their microbiome; if raised in sterile conditions, desert woodrats don't develop their special ability to feed on poisonous mesquite trees, and bobtail squid that should be bioluminescent remain dark.
Fair warning if you are prone to existential crises, this book might give you one. What does it mean to be one? If you can't function without your internal ecosystem of billions of creatures, in what sense are you separate from them? We can't even point to the genome as the marker of distinction, as genetic material from ancient strains of bacteria can pass into the host organism's cells and become part of its DNA. The book explores the possibility that the borders of biological individuality are blurrier than we imagine, and suggests that what we see as one person or one animal is in some sense an emergent phenomenon.
Yong's writing is clear and vivid, with good use of figurative language that gets his point across without overdoing it. He gives ample attention to the scientific process and the people who do the research, from the early development of microscopy in the 17th century through to innovative bacterial manipulations that prevent mosquitos from transmitting viruses in the present day. He's also skilled at navigating the controversies and unknowns of microbial medicine. There can be a lot of "woo" and breathless hype around things like probiotics and (yikes) fecal transplantation, but Yong is always careful to be evenhanded and manage expectations.
One area where he could have been more thoughtful about his presentation is in discussing claims that probiotics can "cure" autism and obesity. He is clear that these claims are overblown and medically irresponsible, and I wouldn't say he endorses the implication that neurodivergence is bad and all fat people need to lose weight, but I wish he had done more to explicitly challenge it.
He does a better job of sensitively handling the range of human differences in his later book An Immense World—which is what you'd hope for! I do think An Immense World clearly shows six years of Yong's growth as a writer and a journalist, but I Contain Multitudes is also an excellent book and well worth reading.
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