Experimental Man

David Ewing Duncan

Description

Bestselling author David Ewing Duncan takes the ultimate high-tech medical exam, investigating the future impact of what's hidden deep inside all of us

David Ewing Duncan takes "guinea pig" journalism to the cutting edge of science, building on award-winning articles he wrote for Wired and National Geographic, in which he was tested for hundreds of chemicals and genes associated with disease, emotions, and other traits. Expanding on these tests, he examines his genes, environment, brain, and body, exploring what they reveal about his and his family's future health, traits, and ancestry, as well as the profound impact of this new self-knowledge on what it means to be human.

David Ewing Duncan (San Francisco, CA) is the Chief Correspondent of public radio's Biotech Nation and a frequent commentator on NPR's Morning Edition. He is a contributing editor to Portfolio, Discover, and Wired and a columnist for Portfolio. His books include the international bestseller Calendar: Humanity's Epic Struggle to Determine a True and Accurate Year (978-0-380-79324-2). He is a former special producer and correspondent for ABC's Nightline, and appears regularly on CNN and programs such as Today and Good Morning America.
Experimental Man Index.

Introduction.

A fish and mercury story.

Your host.

Checkup with my internist (the plan and three rules).

1. GENES.

Not a genetic virgin.

Predicting the future.

I’m doomed. Or not.

A tale of two brothers.

My gene pool (mother, father, brother and daughter).

Rollo the Viking and me.

My dinosaur DNA.

You show me yours, I’ll show you mine.

Genes-‘r’ us.

Ready for prime time?

2. ENVIRONMENT.

Light my fire.

Three-thousand-mile trail of blood.

Idyllic childhood in Kansas, except for the toxic waste dump.

Hotspot on the Hudson.

Whose body burden?

Do my genes protect me?

Immortal cells bathed in mercury.

The rise of envirogenetics.

3. BRAIN.

The incredible shrinking brain.

Remembering the moon over the mountain, forget the blonde.

A brain half my age.

High anxiety and the saber-toothed editor.

Does my brain believe in God?

Greed, gambling, and why my brain loves Dodgeball, the movie.

Building a new superbrain.

Meta-neuroscience and the elusive whole.

4. BODY.

Prediction: Heart attack in 2017?

Raging Lipids.

Bumps on my kidneys. …oh no!

Life at 122 (the gene that regulates forever).

Epilogue: Eternity.

Experimental Children.

Acknowledgments.

Notes.

Glossary.

Experimental Man Online.

Index.

Sujets

• Human Anatomy
• Life Sciences
• Sciences et techniques
• Wire (disambiguation)
• Physiology
• Wired
• National Geographic
• Science

Informations

• Publié par: Turner Publishing Company
• Date de parution: 17 novembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781118031643
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

CONTENTS
Experimental Man Index
Introduction
Chapter 1: Genes
Not a genetic virgin
Predicting the future
I m doomed. Or not
A tale of two brothers
My gene pool (mother, father, brother, and daughter)
Rollo the Viking and me
My dinosaur DNA
You show me yours, I ll show you mine
Genes r us
Ready for prime time?
Chapter 2: Environment
Light my fire
Three-thousand-mile trail of blood
Idyllic childhood in Kansas, except for the toxic waste dump
Hotspot on the Hudson
Whose body burden?
Do my genes protect me?
Immortal cells bathed in mercury
The rise of envirogenetics
Chapter 3: Brain
The incredible shrinking brain
Remember the moon over the mountain, forget the blonde
A brain half my age
High anxiety and the saber-toothed editor
Does my brain believe in God?
Greed, gambling, and why my brain loves Dodgeball , the movie
Building a new superbrain
Meta-neuroscience and the elusive whole
Chapter 4: Body
Prediction: Heart attack in 2017?
Raging lipids
Bumps on my kidneys . . . oh no!
Life at age 122 (the gene that regulates forever)
Epilogue: Eternity
Acknowledgments
Notes
Glossary
Experimental Man Online
Index

Copyright 2009 by David Ewing Duncan. All rights reserved
Published by John Wiley Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey
Published simultaneously in Canada
The chart on page 296 is courtesy of Olivier Boss and Sirtris Pharmaceuticals.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
Duncan, David Ewing.
Experimental man: what one man s body reveals about his future, your health, and our toxic world / David Ewing Duncan.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-470-17678-8 (cloth)
1. Health risk assessment. 2. Environmental health. 3. Medical innovations. 4. Medical genetics. I. Title.
RA427.3.D86 2009
362.1-dc22
2008047040
To my family
I love fools experiments.
I am always making them.
-CHARLES DARWIN, LETTER, 1887
Experimental Man Index

Amount of blood in the human body, in liters: 5.6
Amount of blood drawn by author for this book at different times, in liters: 1.4
Hours author spent in an MRI: 22
Number of gigabytes of data author produced: 100+
Number of chemical toxins author tested for: 320
Number of toxins detected in author s body: 165
Number of toxins detected in author s body at levels over the national mean: 155
Number of gene markers the author was tested for, in millions: 7-10
Number of gene markers tested for in author s family, in millions: 5
Number of gene markers tested in the author that are associated with a trait: 7,000+
Number of high-risk gene markers 1 (approximate): 122
Author s favorite gene marker: Caffeine fast metabolizer gene
Number of author s high-risk gene markers for heart attack: 7
Online genetic company s stated risk factor for the author s risk of a heart attack: high, medium, and low (see I m doomed. Or not. )
Rise in mercury levels after author eats two meals of big fish, in parts per billion, before and after: 4-14
Flame retardant levels (PBDE-47) detected in the author s blood, percentage above U.S. mean: 1,200
Predominant side of author s brain: Right
Status of the size of author s brain: Shrinking
Average background radiation exposure per person from the sun and other sources, per year, in millisievers: 3-4
Author s radiation exposure from a single full-body CT scan, in millisievers: 6-8
Average life span of an American in 1900, in years: 47.3
Average life span of an American in 2005, in years: 77.8
Author s maximum age, range of predictions, in years: 59-122
Author s production of a biomarker associated with longevity, percentage above average: 1,000
Cost of all the author s tests, including those conducted pro bono: $150,000-$500,000
1 Risk factors of 1.5 times normal and above.
INTRODUCTION
All Life is an experiment. The more experiments you make, the better.
-RALPH WALDO EMERSON

A fish and mercury story
When the halibut on my hook broke the surface, writhing in a splash of seawater, I was thinking less of this fish s fate than of my own. Considering that I planned to kill and eat it, this might seem cruel. Yet this flat, odd-looking creature had tucked inside its fat and muscle cells a substance as poisonous to me, if this fish becomes my meal, as it could be to him-methyl mercury, the most common form of mercury that builds up inside people (and fish). At the right dose and duration of exposure, methyl mercury can impair a person s memory, ability to learn, and behavior. Even in small doses, methyl mercury can cause birth defects in fetuses exposed to it in the womb and in breast-fed newborns whose mothers milk is laced with tiny amounts of this heavy metal.
Scientists have assured me, however, that a single halibut contains nowhere near a dosage that might cause harm. These are the same scientists who admit that no one knows for sure what the threshold dose is that causes this toxic metal to subtly poison cells in the brain and the liver, two organs where it tends to accumulate.
I m fishing from the bow of the Osprey , a tiny, open-decked trawler, as part of an experiment that started a few days earlier when I gave up 9 millimeters of blood and enough pee to fill a tiny cup. The idea is to test my normal level of methyl mercury-the background level that I typically have in my body from living on Earth in the twenty-first century, in the city of San Francisco, California-and then to give up more bodily fluids after I have eaten today s catch for lunch and a store-bought swordfish on the same day for dinner. Would my level rise?
I live just a few miles south of Bolinas, California, where we are now bobbing just off the coast above a field of kelp where halibut troll for food. The kelp is also a repository of lost hooks that landlubbers like me tend to lose when we lamely snag them on the leathery plants and the hooks have to be cut loose-so says the Osprey s skipper and sole member of her crew, Josh Churchman. Fifty-something and stubbly bearded, with graying hair and a faded baseball cap, Churchman has been fishing solo for more than three decades on this twenty-four-foot vessel with a steering cabin large enough to fit a single person. He let me come along because he s worried about mercury in the fish he catches and regularly eats and because he loves the company. He hasn t stopped talking since we motored out here from the Bolinas Lagoon a couple of hours ago.
Methyl mercury gets into these fish from coal-burning power plants that rim the northern Pacific, from the United States and Mexico to Japan and China. Expelled from tall stacks, mercury is carried in the upper atmosphere until it rains down over the eastern Pacific Ocean, where microorganisms transform it into methyl mercury. It then moves up the food chain after being absorbed by plankton that is eaten by small fish. They are gobbled up by larger predators, as each bigger fish accumulates more mercury with every meal-including the halibut that was now tiring and allowing itself to be reeled in as Churchman leaned far over the gunwales with a net.
In my before test for mercury, I had registered a level of 4 micrograms per liter ( g/l), safely below the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) threshold of 5.8 g/l. (This is the same as saying parts per billion, a very small amount.) In a previous before and after test, I had registered 5 g/l, the difference coming because mercury, like all toxins, stays inside the average person only as long as it takes the body to expel it-a process that depends on the chemical and on people s different physiologies. For instance, phthalates, which among other things make plastic soft and malleable, dissipate in the human body in only a few hours. Other chemicals, once on board, stay for years, such as perfluorinated acids (PFOAs), the hard, nonstick material in Teflon and formerly in Scotchgard fabric protector. Mercury stays in most peop