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Human beings today are living in a world of new diseases, plagues, and infections marked by the noticeable increase in patients with food allergies, diabetes, metabolic disorders, obesity, diarrhea, and asthma. In Missing Microbes: How the Overuse of Antibiotics Is Fueling Our Modern Plagues, Dr Blaser demonstrates and evaluates that the current rise in the mentioned conditions is not an accident. The notorious medical researcher claims that this increase is the consequence of the damage of essential bacteria through the excessive use of wide-ranging antibiotics. According to him, “we live on a microbial planet that is totally dominated by forms of life too small to be seen by the naked eye” (Blaser 13). In short, Blaser’s exceptionally-written book provides insight concerning the significance of microbes for the survival of human beings.
Since the introduction of antibiotics, these powerful medicines are principally used to treat the bacterial illnesses that were incurable previously such as tuberculosis and typhoid. As expected, the antibiotics were viewed by the physicians as magic bullets. However, the increased usage of antibiotics brought with it a certain idea concerning one’s physical health. In the similar connection, Robert Koch introduced the one-microbe, one-disease model postulating that the body is a platform upon which particular bacterial pathogen are detected and then attacked by the physicians with antibiotics. Dr Blaser defies this model disputing that Koch’s model does not consider the combined environment of transmittable and contagious diseases. He argues that such a milieu not only involves the presence of an ill host but also signifies a collegial community of innumerable microbial creatures in and on the body of the human beings. The author presents the argument that even though antibiotics and Koch’s model have helped in the treatment of numerous diseases; their overuse has caused profound damage to human beings’ gut microbiota diversity. By building on and exploiting the work of Joshua Lederberg and Theodor Rosebury, Dr Blaser hypothesizes that the disappearing microbiota “changes development itself, affecting our metabolism, immunity, and cognition” (Blaser 6). His postulations also reveal the hazardousness of the overuse of antiseptics and c-sections and how these processes have made permanent changes in our microbiome.
The studies conducted by Blaser suggest that antibiotics use in phase of early childhood put children at risk of long-term physical consequences as a result of illnesses. Frighteningly, children in America receive about 17 antibiotic courses on average till they reach the 20-years mark. In the similar fashion, C-sections result in the deprivation of babies from contacting the important microbiomes present on an in their mothers’ body.
Work Cited
Blaser, Martin J. Missing Microbes: How the Overuse of Antibiotics Is Fueling Our Modern Plagues. New York: OneWorld Publications, 2014. Print.
