It Takes a Genome: How a Clash Between Our Genes and Modern Life Is Making Us Sick

Genetic Imperfection

Of all the paradoxes in the world, surely one of the most absurd is that the very same genome that gives us life inevitably also takes it away. Even when they aren’t killing us, our genes are generally making existence more difficult than seems absolutely necessary. Very few people escape this world having avoided a bout with cancer or diabetes or asthma or depression, and those who do often end up too senile to remember much of the journey anyway. What good reason could there possibly be for so much suffering and disease?

Maybe there is no good reason, other than that genetic disease is an unavoidable byproduct of the way organisms are assembled; disease arises because humans, like all other species on the planet, are an ...