Book Review: Microcompetition with Foreign DNA and the Origin of Chronic Disease

摘要

This is a difficult book. But it is also a fascinating work. The hypothesis of the book is a simple one, one that is expressed in the title: microcompetition with foreign DNA (a virus) leads to chronic diseases. To take an example from the chapter on atherosclerosis, microcompetition between a virus (in this case cytomegalovirus) and a transcription factor GABP leads to decreased binding of the latter to a DNA sequence, which in turn increases the degree of plaque formation. This is achieved through a series of steps that take effort to absorb. This is what makes the book difficult. The author painstakingly makes his case by setting up the building blocks for his argument. He does so by marshalling an impressive list of references that prove his point. He then takes those points a step further by funneling them into his hypothesis. This is done with the help of flow diagrams and mathematics—this too could make the job of reading this book difficult for some. I cannot claim that I understood every sentence in this book, but that, with the employment of more than the usual number of neurons (too many at times), I was able to comprehend many of the author's points. That this book is hard to read is definitely a criticism. But one thing is for certain that this book does not deserve to be left unread because it is difficult. Instead, this is work that demands a fair reading, or multiple fair readings, and beyond that, it needs to be evaluated, and ‘answered,’ as I explain below.