Moises Velasquez-Manoff on Autoimmune Disease, Parasites, and Complexity

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4.7 • 4.4K Ratings

🗓️ 3 March 2014

⏱️ 73 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Moises Velasquez-Manoff, author of An Epidemic of Absence, talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about his book--a discussion of why allergies and autoimmune diseases have been on the rise in the developed world for the last half-century. Velasquez-Manoff explores a recent hypothesis in the epidemiological literature theorizing the increase is a response to the overly hygienic environment in rich countries and the absence of various microbes and parasites. Velasquez-Manoff also considers whether reintroducing parasites into our bodies can have therapeutic effects, a possibility currently under examination through FDA trials. The conversation continues a theme of EconTalk--the challenge of understanding causation in a complex world.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Econ Talk, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty. I'm your host, Russ Roberts,
0:07.8	of Stanford University's Hoover Institution. Our website is econtalk.org where you can
0:13.6	subscribe, comment on this podcast, and find links and other information related to today's
0:18.1	conversation. We'll also find our archives where you can listen to every episode we've ever done
0:23.1	going back to 2006. Our email address is mailadycontalk.org. We'd love to hear from you.
0:32.6	Before we get started today, I want to list the top 10 episodes of econtalk for 2013 as
0:37.9	voted by you, the listeners. I really appreciated all the feedback and personal information that you
0:42.7	gave me along with your votes near the top 10 episodes. There was a tie for first, a literal
0:47.6	actual tie, Lamov on teaching, and David Epstein on the sports gene. They both tied for first.
0:53.5	Third place was clean on the three languages of politics, fourth to lab on skin in the game,
0:59.2	fifth, curry on climate change, six, monger on milk, seven, thermon on bees, eight, monger on
1:06.3	sports norms, nine, austere on pregnancy, and ten, palata on charity. Thanks again. We'll do that
1:14.0	again for 2014. And now for today's guest. Today is February 10, 2014. My guest is my ses
1:21.8	Velasquez Manoff, author of the remarkable book, an epidemic of absence, a new way of understanding
1:28.8	allergies and autoimmune disease, which is the subject of today's podcast. My ses, welcome to
1:35.6	econtalk. Thanks for having me. And this book was recommended, recommended to me by a listener,
1:41.3	San Diego, Alonzo Lorde. I'm sorry, I missed it the first two times around in hardcover and
1:46.2	paperback, but I'm sure glad I found it. For better or for worse, it vindicates a lot of my dads
1:52.0	to use of the world, as we'll see as we go on. It's always hard sometimes hard for a son to accept.
1:58.4	My dad was not obsessed with cleanliness and germs. And it turns out, as your book points out,
2:04.7	that this may be sometimes surprisingly a good thing. This is an incredible book. It's from the
2:10.5	cutting edge of medicine and science, equally valuable. It is written without hysteria or over
	...

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