Human Errors

A Panorama of Our Glitches, from Pointless Bones to Broken Genes

Nathan H. Lents

• Publisher: Mariner Books
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781328974679
• Topic: Sciences biologiques
• Subtopic: Anatomie humaine et physiologie

A biology professor's "funny, fascinating" tour of the physical imperfections—from faulty knees to junk DNA—that make us human (Discover). We humans like to think of ourselves as highly evolved creatures. But if we are supposedly evolution's greatest creation, why do we have such bad knees? Why do we catch head colds so often—two hundred times more often than a dog does? How come our wrists have so many useless bones? Why is the vast majority of our genetic code pointless? And are we really supposed to swallow and breathe through the same narrow tube? Surely there's been some kind of mistake? As professor of biology Nathan H. Lents explains in Human Errors, our evolutionary history is indeed nothing if not a litany of mistakes, each more entertaining and enlightening than the last. The human body is one big pile of compromises. But that is also a testament to our greatness: as Lents shows, humans have so many design flaws precisely because we are very, very good at getting around them. A rollicking, deeply informative tour of humans' four-billion-year-and-counting evolutionary saga, Human Errors both celebrates our imperfections and offers an unconventional accounting of the cost of our success. "An insightful and entertaining romp through the myriad ways in which the human body falls short of an engineering ideal—and the often-surprising reasons why."—Ian Tattersall, author ofThe Monkey in the Mirror

Index

A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z

Page numbers in italics refer to figures.

A

abortion, spontaneous, 102–4

Achilles tendon, 24–25

ACL (anterior cruciate ligament), 22–24, 22, 28

adaptation, 31

adolescents, risk-taking, 187–91

aging, 211, 214

agriculture, 46

AIDS, 74

alien life, 203–7, 208, 209, 210

allergies, 11, 140–46

alpha-linolenic acid, 51–52

Alu, 87–89, 90

American Autoimmune-Related Diseases Association, 138

American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology, 102

amino acids, 48–52

anastomoses, 150–52, 151

anchoring bias, 180–81

anecdotes, 184–87

anemia, 44, 55, 56, 57, 58

animals, nonhuman

autoimmune diseases, 139

birth in, 112

breathing in, 19

in captivity, 61

economic transactions by, 183

genes in, 68

infant mortality rate, 106

iron, 58–59

obesity, 60–62

starvation, 61–62

technology use by, 199

vegetarian, 44

vestigial structures in, 31–32

See also specific animals

ankles, 24–25, 28–29, 29

anterior cruciate ligament (ACL), 22–24, 22, 28

antibodies, 128, 132–33, 141–42

antigens, 140

AO-4, 32–33, 32

apes, 12, 21

apoptosis, 136

arms, bones in, 28, 31

Attenborough, David, 200

Australopithecus afarensis, 107

autoimmune disease. See disease, autoimmune

B

B cells, 136

B vitamins, 37–38, 43, 44–47

babies, 20

fever, 143–44

helplessness of, 107–8

infant mortality rate, 104–6

infection,...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Contents
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Introduction: Behold the Blunders of Nature
• Pointless Bones and Other Anatomical Errors
• Our Needy Diet
• Junk in the Genome
• Homo sterilis
• Why God Invented Doctors
• A Species of Suckers
• Epilogue: The Future of Humanity
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Index
• About the Author
• Connect with HMH
• Footnotes