Bibliothèque de L'IMIST/CNRST

"How to avoid disease, how to breed successfully, and how to live to a reasonable age are questions that have perplexed mankind throughout history. This book explores our progress in understanding these challenges and the risks and rewards of our attempts to find solutions. Nutritional experiences and exposure to microbes and alien chemicals have consequences that are etched into our cells and genomes. Such events have a crucial impact on development in utero and in childhood and later affect the way we age, how we respond to infection, and the likelihood of our developing chronic diseases, including cancer. The author discusses how prospects for human life might continually improve as biomedicine addresses these problems and also examines the ethical checkpoints encountered."--MONO JACKET.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 321-339) and index.

Challenges, risks, and rewards: learning to control our biological fate -- Learning to breed successfully -- How life is handed on -- Cells in sickness and health -- Experiences in Utero affect later life -- Infection, nutrition, and poisons: avoiding an unhealthy life -- Signs of ageing: when renovation slows -- Cancer and the body plan: a Darwinian struggle -- Fighting infection -- Are devastating epidemics still possible? -- Discovering medicines: infinite variety through chemistry -- Protein medicines from gene technology -- Refurbishing the body -- Living with the genetic legacy -- Epilogue: signposts to "wonderland."