Theresa MacPhail
Auteur de Allergic: How Our Immune System Reacts to a Changing World
A propos de l'auteur
Theresa MacPhail is Assistant Professor/Faculty Fellow in the John W. Draper Interdisciplinary Master's Program in Humanities and Social Thought at New York University.
Œuvres de Theresa MacPhail
The Viral Network: A Pathography of the H1N1 Influenza Pandemic (Expertise: Cultures and Technologies of Knowledge) (2014) 14 exemplaires
The Eye of the Virus 2 exemplaires
Étiqueté
Partage des connaissances
- Sexe
- female
Membres
Critiques
Statistiques
- Œuvres
- 3
- Membres
- 79
- Popularité
- #226,897
- Évaluation
- 4.1
- Critiques
- 2
- ISBN
- 8
Have you noticed how allergies and asthma seem more pervasive, and severe, than ever? You’re not alone.
Allergic: Our Irritated Bodies in a Changing World is a well-researched exploration into allergies.
The author seems to suffer allergies herself, and she is haunted by the death of her father by an anaphylactic response to a bee sting. She goes about researching and interviewing scientists and others on the cutting edge of exploring allergies and all they are about.
What she has to say is quite disturbing on many levels.
The basic idea behind allergies has been known for about a century. The “immune system” treats a harmless substance as if it were a significant threat to the body, and various systems are activated in order to combat the “threat.” At best, one experiences discomfort, congestion, and inflammation; at worst, the body goes into anaphylactic shock and dies.
How we determine if people have allergies has not changed much for a century. She exposes how skin tests are notoriously unreliable: many times a person will show skin evidence of a food allergy, but the body does not otherwise currently react to that food, or perhaps might start doing so in the future but not the present. This is not a denial of food allergies; it’s just that skin tests do not well reflect what food allergies a person experiences. Blood tests can do somewhat better but will not gauge the severity of the allergy. The author learns that she has no skin or blood markers for allergies, and yet she experiences the symptoms of allergies in certain circumstances.
All of this goes to show how little we really know and understand about allergy and how it works. It is getting worse; there is more pollen in the air, pollutants exacerbate our likelihood of coming down with allergies and asthma, and our indoor-centric lifestyles are not helping out, either.
And then there’s the challenge of medical care for allergies and asthma: the promise of certain medicines, but the significant cost involved.
As one with environmental and food allergies and asthma I appreciated all the research that went into this book and the presentation of all the evidence. Hopefully scientists will figure some of these things out. Or, better yet, we stop polluting our environment so much and maybe we won’t be as allergic to it.… (plus d'informations)