Summary Of The Wild Life Of Our Bodies

Rob Dunn is a biologist, writer, and a professor at North Carolina State University who enjoys telling medical stories in an effort to reveal the connection between species. Dunn provides information that others often neglect or do not acknowledge. His passion for nature and educating others started at a young age and has continued into adulthood. One of Dunn’s many books, The Wild Life of Our Bodies, focuses on the evolution of the human body throughout human history. He considers the human body’s relationship with other species to be vital to a healthy survival. While Dunn successfully argues the need for humans to interact with other species and effectively supports his theories with many different thought-provoking studies and a seven-part
One intriguing source was a study by Joel Weinstock who was a gastroenterologist examining the effects of wipeworms on the gastrointestinal tract. Due to his field and knowledge of gastroenterology, Weinstock is qualified to study inflammatory bowel disease such as Crohn’s disease. In this study, he focused on the positive influence of whipworms on a person with Crohn’s by giving “a glass of Gatorade with whipworms suspended in it” to each patient (37). In the end, majority of patient’s condition improved while others declined or remained the same. This study was able to prove Dunn’s point that attachment to other species is vital for a happy and healthier life. Another creditable experiment was a study by James Arthur Reyniers who was a bacteriologist trying to make the first germ free animal. The study consists of giving birth to a guinea pig inside a giant metal ball so that the baby could live in a world without any germs. Reyniers believed if we could “kill the germs” then “we would be healthier and happier” (74). However, Dunn was able to refute Reyniers’ argument by expressing Reyniers’ failure of keeping bacteria out of the chambers killing the guinea pig. Therefore, due to Reyniers’ credentials in bacteriology, this study was appropriate to prove that we can live without bacteria as long as that is where we were birthed but it is too hard to exclude
When Dunn uses studies like these, he losses creditability on large source experiments like the studies above. For example, after explaining Weinstock’s study of whipworms’ effect on Crohn’s disease, Dunn explains a woman’s journey to obtain hookworms out of the country due to her belief in Weinstock’s study. A woman, Debora Wade, was tired of all the complications with Crohn’s disease and the fact that “the drugs she was taking for the Crohn’s were not working” (45). So she went to a Mexican clinic to get hookworm eggs like the ones in Weinstock’s experiment, but in the end, the hookworms only helped for a short period of time before all her symptoms and complications came back. This proved Dunn’s theory that treatments only works sometimes due to the different way people exclude themselves from germs and bacteria. In the other study of Reyniers’ experiment of a bacteria free animal, Dunn introduces the anecdote of the bubble boy. The bubble boy was a child who “had been transferred antiseptically into a chamber at birth because he lacked an immune system” (76). Dunn uses this one instance of the bubble boy to prove that the bubble boy died after reattachment to other germs and bacteria due to his lack of interaction with these species. Together these experiments are anecdotes that Dunn uses as resources to support his other large