A compelling look at disease from an evolutionary perspective, the book describes germs' emergence, spread, and life cycle and draws on medicine and evolutionary biology to explain why chronic infections can lurk in the body for decades. In an area of medicine where debates tend to pit genes against behavior, Ewald makes a convincing case for a closer look at infectious factors. By identifying this underestimated menace, Ewald's controversial theory urges conventional medicine to reassess its approach to ailments including cancer and degenerative disease. According to conventional wisdom, our genes and lifestyles are the most important causes of cancer, heart disease, and other killer ailments today.
Conventional wisdom is wrong.
In this bold, visionary book, biologist Paul W. Ewald argues that these serious illnesses are caused by a virtual plague of chronic infections. Chronic infections, however, are stealthy predators that may not produce any symptoms for decades, and so remain almost undetectable, but eventually they ruin the sufferer's life. The netherworld of stealth infections is now opening before us. Acclaimed for years as one of the most important thinkers alive today on the genesis of disease, Ewald now explodes conventional medical thinking with a new comprehensive view of what germs do. In most cases it is already too late.