Human Frontiers, Environments and Disease: Past Patterns, Uncertain Futures
by Tony McMichael

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Book Reviews of Human Frontiers, Environments and Disease: Past Patterns, Uncertain Futures

Book Review: This book sets the agenda for the 21st century
Summary: 5 Stars

McMichael takes Darwin's theory of natural selection, with its three elements, variation, competition and differential reproductive success and extends Darwin's approach using the more recent ideas of self-organizing complexity and of emergent properties.

He considers the way humans have diverged in the last 10,000 years from the pattern established over 5 million years of evolution. This diversion has (a) lead to many diseases and unhealthy conditions and (b) modified the local and global environment in ways which have clear health implications for the human species.

I do not have space here to go through his description of the diseases and conditions, so will merely list some of them and refer you to the book for an illuminating, scientific discussion of their causes, why they have become more common over the past half century and their possible treatments. Auto-immune diseases, polio, childhood asthma and hay fever, inflammatory bowel diseases such as Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis, insulin-dependent (childhood onset) diabetes, multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, lactose intolerance, skin cancer.

McMichael also deals with the contentious issue of genetically modified foods. This is one of the best parts of the book as it takes the non-specialist reader carefully through the underlying science and presents the pros and cons of GM. McMichael invokes the 'precautionary principle' to come down - at the present time - against GM, an unusual position for a trained scientist. His position is based solely on science, not on emotion, tradition, or any mystical notion of what is "natural".

The book also deals with the pressures human population is putting on the survival of all the other species on the planet. Here he brings up to date the work of Joel Cohen's 1995 book (How Many People Can Earth Support) and uses the 'ecological footprint' methodology to consider the number of people the planet can (a) feed, (b) supply with fresh water, (c) supply with energy, (d) support without reducing biodiversity.

His answers, of course, depend upon the consumption levels which are assumed for the population, but in almost all cases, these answers are less than the planet's present six billion people. How can this be?

There are two reasons. First because of 'ecological deficit budgeting' or, in the catchy phrase of Tim Flannery, because Homo sapiens is a 'future eater'. (See Flannery's two books The Future Eaters, and The Eternal Frontier - check my review of the latter here at amazon.com.)

Secondly because of the time lags which accompany environmental change. McMichael brings this home with the fact that, if we can halt the build-up of greenhouse gases by 2070, the world's oceans will continue to warm and expand for another thousand years! One of the key questions for our time is: Can our opinion leaders and decision makers give such unfamiliar time frames their due weight?

As a member of the International Panel on Climate Change, McMichael also has a useful presentation, explanation and discussion on global climate change. The recent fires in the US, freezing and floods in Europe and climatic records (extremes) have brought home to ordinary people, non-scientists, that something unusual is happening. This book explains why, explains how and looks into the future for the effects of climate change on human health. McMichael concludes that "It will be reasonable from here on to regard each extreme weather event as containing at least some human-induced component".

The book addresses the issue of globalization. The author paints a picture of deregulation reducing labour and environmental controls and increasing disease and social disruption in both the West and in low-income countries.

What of the future? McMichael considers far more than I can squeeze into this review, but an interesting observation concerns the importance of the way in which the tension between two evolutionarily-determined human mental attributes is played out. Humans have a long standing expertise at dealing with urgent crises, 'flight-or-fight'. But this tendency has got us to our present environmental predicament. The question is whether can we use our more recently acquired abilities for long-term planning, sophisticated scientific reasoning and information technology to rescue us from the short-termism of flight-or-fight.

The book uses brilliantly conceived and very telling graphs which are powerful examples of a picture being worth a thousand words. Each repays careful study.

Each chapter ends with a useful 2-3 page summary and conclusion. There are 36 pages of annotated bibliography, many references from 2000, even 2001.

If you'd like a taste for the fast pace of the book and the author's scientific approach, I recommend his account of Lyme disease on page 117.

Summary of Human Frontiers, Environments and Disease: Past Patterns, Uncertain Futures

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