Human Errors

A Panorama of Our Glitches, from Pointless Bones to Broken Genes

By: Nathan H. Lents

Narrated by: L.J. Ganser

We humans like to think of ourselves as highly evolved creatures. But if we are supposedly evolution's greatest creation, why do we have such bad knees? Why do we catch head colds so often - 200 times more often than a dog does? How come our wrists have so many useless bones? Why is the vast majority of our genetic code pointless? And are we really supposed to swallow and breathe through the same narrow tube? Surely there's been some kind of mistake.

As professor of biology Nathan H. Lents explains in Human Errors, our evolutionary history is nothing if not a litany of mistakes, each more entertaining and enlightening than the last. The human body is one big pile of compromises. But that is also a testament to our greatness: as Lents shows, humans have so many design flaws precisely because we are very, very good at getting around them.

A rollicking, deeply informative tour of humans' four billion year-long evolutionary saga, Human Errors both celebrates our imperfections and offers an unconventional accounting of the cost of our success.

©2018 Nathan H. Lents (P)2018 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

Excellent audio book.

As a physician spending 50 years treating broken bodies science has made astounding Progress. This review deals with many of the problems of our bodies. But I think the future due to our ability and brains with the advancement of science is very bright indeed

Updated Review

FIRST REVIEW:
I tried mightily, but I just couldn't finish this book.
I am pretty much alone here in my negative review, but when I listened to the chapter on nutrition and heard what the author said about vegetarians and combining foods (a theory that has been debunked over the years) and other nutritional ideas that promote the eating of animal flesh,
That propaganda, along with lots of angst for people who can't conceive (nature and adoption, anyone?) and no mention of the terrible effects of overpopulation on our planet, along with long passages about how hard it is for humans to conceive and therefore how sad, made it difficult for me to continue listening.
Perhaps the rest of this book would have assuaged my negative opinions, but I didn't feel like continuing especially with the condescending tone of the narrator.

UPDATE:
I finished listening and I'm glad I did. Even though I still agree with what I stated above, the rest of the book really won me over. It proves I might always try to finish listening. Well, almost always.
The self-righteous and pretentious tone softened to explain some very enlightening things about human minds. This part was an in-depth look at cultural, sociological and hereditary aspects of the brain. This was worth the whole book.
Changing the stars from one to three!

Great read with one little caveat.

I really enjoyed this book. It was well laid out. I just wish we didn't have to end every modern scientific documentary or book with a section on climate change and flawed renewable resources such as wind, with no mention of nuclear energy.

Really enjoyed this one.

An approachable overview of the existence of and causes of human maladies. I learned a few new things about the human genome and reasons for human illnesses.

Entertaining look at our glitches and flaws

Nathan Lents gives us a lively and interesting look at some of the major flaws of the human body--starting with our eyes, and working downward. Our lenses are backwards. Our wrists and ankles have extra, unnecessary bones that serve no real function. We have a variety of genetic diseases, more than most other species, and they don't get effectively selected against for a variety of frustrating reasons. Once a gene acquires a mutation, it tends to accumulate more mutations. Once that happens, the problem can't be fixed by another single mutation of the kind that caused the original problem. The deletion of our ability to manufacture our own vitamin C, like most mammals, got deleted in a common ancestor of primate species long ago. It wasn't selected against because all the early primates lived in the midst of a vitamin C-rich food supply. That mutation has been accumulating more mutations since long before genus homo arose. We're not getting it back.

Others are even more frustrating. The mutation that causes sickle cell anemia causes a devastating, painful, deadly disease--if you get two copies of that gene, one each from father and mother. It ought to have been selected against long ago! Oh, except for one inconvenient fact. If you get only one copy of the disease, you have a higher than normal resistance to malaria. Malaria can also debilitate and kill you. Someone who has one copy of the sickle cell gene doesn't get sickle cell, and is less likely to get malaria, and more likely to survive malaria if they do. In regions where malaria is a major problem, people with one copy of the sickle cell gene will be more likely to live long enough to have more offspring, and thus more descendants--even though some of them will have sickle cell anemia due to getting two copies of the gene.

Nor are we really fully adapted to walking upright, or to giving birth to children with such large brains. Our babies are born several months earlier than they "should" be, based on the degree of development they have at birth, even compared to our closest relatives, the common chimpanzee and the bonobo.

I can't do credit to Lents' writing of this, or to L.J. Ganser's reading of it. It's informative and enjoyable.

Recommended.

I bought this audiobook.

Perfect overview of the body's quirks.

It was effortless to listen to and the candor kept it interesting the whole way through. It just ended and it was like the cable cutting out in the middle of a show your were really enjoying except it wrapped up perfectly before it did.

Enjoyable romp through our design flaws

The author provides an interesting overview of some of the failings of evolution when it comes to the human body - and brain. Whether it's garbage code in our DNA, or failure of the modern human brain to adapt to modern living, or eyes that are back to front, there is a lot of shoddiness in the human body. Simply standing up puts strain on bits that were not designed to operate in this configuration. And I for one want the ability to synthesise my own vitamins rather than having to get them from an external source.

Narrator was fine, no major issues there.

In all, a fascinating, sometimes amusing and often tragic tale of how evolution has given humans a raw deal (sort of, maybe, in some areas).

Very interesting read

Although some of this text gave me anxiety it was nevertheless very interesting to learn how the body works and why it is designed the way it is.

For devotees of science and medicine

As a biology major in college who never went on to medical school or for that matter, to pursue a career in biology, this was an excellent explanation of the technologies that exist today. Particularly, the sciences of nutrition, molecular biology, and causes and treatments of diseases were addressed in depth. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is curious about the biology that encompasses our lives.

Its ok, but not outstanding

The narrator did a good job with a tough topic. The book is a bit too far ranging, and keeps changing topics with little or no notice. Added in stories here and there that were only tangentially related to the particular topic of the moment. All this made it hard to keep going with this book. Also, while the physiological science is accurate, some of the other science facts are not. Such as the one about lightening never striking the same place twice - this is false, as lightening can strike the same place multiple times. Minor discrepancies such as this detract from the book.