by Jessica Snyder Sachs
When people think of “germs”, the connotation is generally bad. In fact, when you look up the word germ, the definition of “microbial organism” is usually followed up with “especially a disease-causing microbial organism.”
As a species, we traditionally don’t think too highly of our microbial co-habitants. Store shelves are covered with products that tout their effectiveness at killing “99.9% of germs and bacteria”.
But are they all bad? In recent years, more awareness has been growing about “pro-biotic” diets and lifestyles; one that introduces “good” bacteria into the body. Nobel Laureate Joshua Lederberg, a pioneer in microbial research, believes that “[w]hat’s important is that we’re better off aspiring to a relationship of symbiotic coexistence.”
And that is the crux of this book. Sachs makes a very strong case for the need to delineate a difference between beneficial microbes and harmful microbes, in the same way that we may differentiate between beneficial small animals (dogs, cats, turtles) and harmful small animals (vipers, porcupines, brown recluse spiders). We have many bacteria (microflora) living inside us that are absolutely critical for our existence — digesting food we cannot otherwise digest, producing chemicals that make our body function better, etc. Read the rest of this entry »
