Allergic
Our Irritated Bodies in a Changing World
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
An “important and deeply researched” (The Wall Street Journal) exploration of allergies, from their first medical description in 1819 to the cutting-edge science that is illuminating the changes in our environment and lifestyles that are making so many of us sick
Hay fever. Peanut allergies. Eczema. Either you have an allergy or you know someone who does. Billions of people worldwide—an estimated 30 to 40 percent of the global population—have some form of allergy. Even more concerning, over the last decade the number of people diagnosed with an allergy has been steadily increasing, placing an ever-growing medical burden on individuals, families, communities, and healthcare systems.
Medical anthropologist Theresa MacPhail, herself an allergy sufferer whose father died of a beesting, set out to understand why. In pursuit of answers, MacPhail studied the dangerous experiments of early immunologists as well as the mind-bending recent development of biologics and immunotherapies that are giving the most severely impacted patients hope. She scaled a roof with an air-quality controller who diligently counts pollen by hand for hours every day; met a mother who struggled to use WIC benefits for her daughter with severe food allergies; spoke with doctors at some of the finest allergy clinics in the world; and discussed the intersecting problems of climate change, pollution, and pollen with biologists who study seasonal respiratory allergies.
This is the story of allergies: what they are, why we have them, and what that might mean about the fate of humanity in a rapidly changing world.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Medical anthropologist MacPhail (The Viral Network) delivers an uneven overview of the science on allergies. Explaining that they likely arise from a blend of genetic and environmental factors, she discusses the genetic mutation that puts certain people at risk of anaphylaxis from bee stings and research that found air pollution leads to higher rates of asthma and respiratory allergies. MacPhail admits "we're stuck with largely unreliable data" on allergy frequency and treatment, a problem that leads to some notable inconsistencies. For instance, she questions whether evidence from surveys, insurance claims, and hospital admissions suggesting increased allergy rates merely indicate greater awareness and willingness to seek help, but later makes the contradictory claim that researchers "can all agree on one thing:... the number of allergy sufferers worldwide is likely to keep growing." Her overview of treatments also gets bogged down in contradictions, as when she posits that air filters "probably don't help, and they might actually make things worse," but later suggests they "can filter some or most of the allergens, like pollen, from the air." There are some enlightening tidbits (she outlines a damning take on how restrictive rules make federally funded food programs almost useless for many with severe food allergies), but MacPhail's clumsy navigation of uncertainties in the scientific literature will leave readers feeling lost. This doesn't come together.
