I thoroughly enjoyed this book and appreciate the novel perspective used to approach real medical problems. I think too often people are focused on the “what” of medicine and understanding how everything occurs and don’t take time to properly consider the “why.” Dr. Sharon Moalem did an excellent job at writing in a way that was enjoyable and exciting to read while still being educational and informative, which is no easy feat. Based on my opinion, I think Dr. Moalem supported his argument and opinions farely well and incorporated multiple different studies and hypotheses to emphasize his points.
Something that I was not super happy with was that he failed to mention any studies or viewpoints that conflicted with his own. For example, in the last chapter, when discussing the different hypotheses for the evolution of bipedalism, Dr. Moalem only brought up the savannah hypothesis and aquatic ape hypothesis, when I know there are multiple other hypotheses that have been put forth. In addition, the way he wrote it made it seem as if the most likely and widely accepted hypothesis is that of the aquatic ape, which is not necessarily accurate. Also, when presenting correlations between events, such as diabetes and the onset of cold weather, to the general public reading this book it may have come off as if correlation implied causation. Any science major can tell you is not the case. Overall, an interesting and educational read. Highly recommend!
