Marlene Zuk: LA Times Riddled with Life Review

From the April 27, 2007 Los Angeles Times

BOOSTER SHOTS
Hug a microbe today
By Rosie Mestel

Bacteria, viruses and fungi cause of all kinds of major and minor plagues and pestilences: bird flu, Ebola, smallpox, athlete's foot. We blast the critters with antimicrobials and recoil in horror should a cookie we're about to eat fall on the ground. (Unless there's no one watching — in which case many folks, we suspect, eat the cookie.)

As for worms: Well, think tapeworm. And cringe.

But there is another way to think about microbes and worms — as entities that have lovingly helped shape the human form. Such is the viewpoint of evolutionary biologist Marlene Zuk of UC Riverside, author of "Riddled With Life: Friendly Worms, Ladybug Sex, and the Parasites That Make Us Who We Are."

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Marlene Zuk Boston Globe Interview

From the April 8th 2007 Boston Globe

The upside of disease
By Anna Mundow
April 8, 2007

The titles of Marlene Zuk's thought-provoking and sublimely witty books tell readers what to expect: "Sexual Selections: What We Can and Can't Learn About Sex From Animals" and now "Riddled With Life: Friendly Worms, Ladybug Sex, and the Parasites That Make Us Who We Are." In "Riddled With Life," Zuk challenges us to consider disease not as an enemy to be eradicated by applying anti bacterial wipes to every surface of our lives, but as an essential part of every living entity's development and survival. Zuk spoke from the University of California, Riverside, where she is a professor of biology.


Q. Why do you call for "disease appreciation " ?

A. The world is full of books that I summarize as "Ebola's Coming : We're All Going to Die." But there's another side to this. Disease has been incredibly important in shaping everything about us. There has been no stage of life in which living things have not had to interact with parasites and pathogens. In fact there's a reasonably well - supported theory that our cells initially evolved with tiny parasites that eventually became the organs inside those cells.

For the rest of the interview, please click here.