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adunten's review
3.0
This is an interesting and well-written book about the sometimes surprising insights human medicine can gain from the world of non-human animals – both veterinary medicine and evolutionary biology. It was first published in 2012, years before COVID-19, and the final chapter on zoonotic diseases and the fact that more of them are inevitable seems eerily prescient. It covers health topics like cardiovascular disease, cancer, sexual behavior and dysfunction, drug addiction, obesity and eating disorders, self-harming behaviors, and more. A couple of examples that may be interesting to the lay reader are:
Sex. One major point made in the chapter on sex is that our most common modern human sexual dysfunctions – erectile dysfunction and premature ejaculation for men, and low libido for women – are perfectly normal results of millions of years of evolutionary forces that our hypersexual modern society has unfairly pathologized. (The other most common dysfunction for women, painful sex, was mentioned but not treated with the detail I thought it deserved, considering how widespread it is.)
Another major takeaway from this chapter, although it's not openly stated in the book, is that anyone looking to the animal world as a moral yardstick for sexual behavior (or any other behavior) is bound to be disappointed. Anyone trying to argue that homosexuality, sodomy, non-procreative sex, group sex, and masturbation are “unnatural” will find all these things are going on all the time all over the “innocent” animal kingdom – not just a few isolated anomalies in a few species. But on the flip side, anyone arguing that the existence of a behavior in the animal kingdom lends it a stamp of moral license because it's “natural” will be appalled to discover all the repellent things animals get up to – theft, adultery, rape, pedophilia, incest, bestiality, murder. The bottom line is morality is a human construct, and we can't look to the animal world as a guide. We have to chart our own path.
Drugs. What we call addiction is the firing of millennia-old pleasure circuits that in animals provide dopamine or oxytocin hits as rewards for doing fitness-promoting behaviors like finding food, bonding with group mates, or copulating. There are lots of natural pharmaceuticals that short-circuit them, sending the eater straight to the reward phase without doing the fitness-promoting task. And it's very common for animals to become addicted to them. You might think that as sapient animals, we should be ahead of the curve because we can reason our way through the problem. But because we're perverse little monkeys, we took the natural pharmaceuticals and refined them into our modern drugs that are many, many times more potent, and then we commoditized them so it's possible to get much more of them. So even though we're smarter than a bird gorging on fermented berries or a cow grazing on locoweed, the addictions we're dealing with are far more vicious. This paradigm also makes it easy to understand behavior addictions to activities like sex, shopping, stealing, video games, gambling, or exercising. When a given neurotransmitter hits your lizard brain, it doesn't know whether it came from a line of cocaine or a big win at the craps table – the same circuit is being activated in your brain.
Eating disorders. You might be surprised to learn that anorexia nervosa isn't unique to human females – it's an all-too-common problem among female pigs in pig farms as well, and it's now thought to have a strong genetic component that goes back millions of years to wild ancestors making risk-benefit decisions about whether to break cover and eat, risking exposure to predators, or stay safely in cover and go hungry.
The most horrific thing I learned from this book, that I wish I could unlearn, and that I'm now going to share with you, is that as recently as the 1980s, medical science believed newborn humans didn't have sufficiently developed nervous systems to consciously experience pain. As a result, sick neonates were being subjected to major invasive surgeries without a drop of anesthesia. They were chemically paralyzed so they couldn't move and botch the surgery, but nor could they let anyone know how much pain they were in as they were being cut open and having their ribs cracked apart for heart surgery.
There is such a wide range of reviews of this book, some calling it smart and well-written, and others criticizing it as so dumbed-down and obvious it's nearly idiotic, actually make me wonder if the author is suffering from “writing while female” syndrome. I'm a reader somewhere in the middle – I'm not in a medical field, but I have a science background, and I thought it was very well done. It's not the type of prose that will make you gush about its elegance, but it's not supposed to be.
Sex. One major point made in the chapter on sex is that our most common modern human sexual dysfunctions – erectile dysfunction and premature ejaculation for men, and low libido for women – are perfectly normal results of millions of years of evolutionary forces that our hypersexual modern society has unfairly pathologized. (The other most common dysfunction for women, painful sex, was mentioned but not treated with the detail I thought it deserved, considering how widespread it is.)
Another major takeaway from this chapter, although it's not openly stated in the book, is that anyone looking to the animal world as a moral yardstick for sexual behavior (or any other behavior) is bound to be disappointed. Anyone trying to argue that homosexuality, sodomy, non-procreative sex, group sex, and masturbation are “unnatural” will find all these things are going on all the time all over the “innocent” animal kingdom – not just a few isolated anomalies in a few species. But on the flip side, anyone arguing that the existence of a behavior in the animal kingdom lends it a stamp of moral license because it's “natural” will be appalled to discover all the repellent things animals get up to – theft, adultery, rape, pedophilia, incest, bestiality, murder. The bottom line is morality is a human construct, and we can't look to the animal world as a guide. We have to chart our own path.
Drugs. What we call addiction is the firing of millennia-old pleasure circuits that in animals provide dopamine or oxytocin hits as rewards for doing fitness-promoting behaviors like finding food, bonding with group mates, or copulating. There are lots of natural pharmaceuticals that short-circuit them, sending the eater straight to the reward phase without doing the fitness-promoting task. And it's very common for animals to become addicted to them. You might think that as sapient animals, we should be ahead of the curve because we can reason our way through the problem. But because we're perverse little monkeys, we took the natural pharmaceuticals and refined them into our modern drugs that are many, many times more potent, and then we commoditized them so it's possible to get much more of them. So even though we're smarter than a bird gorging on fermented berries or a cow grazing on locoweed, the addictions we're dealing with are far more vicious. This paradigm also makes it easy to understand behavior addictions to activities like sex, shopping, stealing, video games, gambling, or exercising. When a given neurotransmitter hits your lizard brain, it doesn't know whether it came from a line of cocaine or a big win at the craps table – the same circuit is being activated in your brain.
Eating disorders. You might be surprised to learn that anorexia nervosa isn't unique to human females – it's an all-too-common problem among female pigs in pig farms as well, and it's now thought to have a strong genetic component that goes back millions of years to wild ancestors making risk-benefit decisions about whether to break cover and eat, risking exposure to predators, or stay safely in cover and go hungry.
The most horrific thing I learned from this book, that I wish I could unlearn, and that I'm now going to share with you, is that as recently as the 1980s, medical science believed newborn humans didn't have sufficiently developed nervous systems to consciously experience pain. As a result, sick neonates were being subjected to major invasive surgeries without a drop of anesthesia. They were chemically paralyzed so they couldn't move and botch the surgery, but nor could they let anyone know how much pain they were in as they were being cut open and having their ribs cracked apart for heart surgery.
There is such a wide range of reviews of this book, some calling it smart and well-written, and others criticizing it as so dumbed-down and obvious it's nearly idiotic, actually make me wonder if the author is suffering from “writing while female” syndrome. I'm a reader somewhere in the middle – I'm not in a medical field, but I have a science background, and I thought it was very well done. It's not the type of prose that will make you gush about its elegance, but it's not supposed to be.
sarahbec's review
1.0
DNF @60%
If you are someone who has never had a pet or encountered any animal before, I would highly recommend this. The biological connection between animals and humans is fascinating. Unfortunately this was just a collection of facts that are so basic and 101 that it was ridiculous. So many of the “revelations” that are discussed in this feel like basic common knowledge to me and I found myself bored.
If you are someone who has never had a pet or encountered any animal before, I would highly recommend this. The biological connection between animals and humans is fascinating. Unfortunately this was just a collection of facts that are so basic and 101 that it was ridiculous. So many of the “revelations” that are discussed in this feel like basic common knowledge to me and I found myself bored.
ktmomma's review
challenging
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
4.25
I really enjoyed this scientifi clook at human/animal medical connections.
rickken's review
4.0
My biggest issue with the book was (1) some claims felt a bit broad and (2) each chapter seemed a bit too self-contained, so that reading the entire thing got repetitive by the end. Still, it's a really wonderful collection of insights and a compelling argument for a more holistic approach to pan-species medicine.
dallaseckman's review
3.0
A fascinating read for anyone interested in the medical profession/interested in medical studies. Eye-opening and tantalizing.