INFLAMED

A passionate exploration of world poverty, racism, injustice, and colonialism that draws a parallel to inflammation.

Marya is a physician, professor of internal medicine, and activist, and Patel is a professor of public affairs and nutrition and the author of the 2010 bestseller The Value of Nothing. In this collaboration, the authors explain that when tissues are damaged or threatened, our immune system sends cells and molecular messengers that attack invaders, repair damage, and restore the body to health. Sometimes, “the response doesn’t switch off, and the result is a chronic inflammatory state. When that happens, the body’s healing mechanism is transformed into a smoldering fire that creates ongoing harm.” We suffer more chronic inflammation as we get older, and external factors (environmental toxins, stress, malnutrition) are the leading causes. The authors are far from the first to stress chronic inflammation’s role in cancer, heart disease, diabetes, colitis, mental illness, dementia, and even aging, although they give it perhaps more credit than it deserves. They are rigorous scientists, so readers will learn a great deal as they describe human biological systems, focusing on the damage inflicted by inflammation but casting a wide thematic net. The chapter on the reproductive system eschews parallels with inflammation in favor of linking colonialism to the oppression of women. The obligatory how-to-fix-it conclusion will leave some readers scratching their heads. Having described a world of Orwellian awfulness, the authors propose not mass action but “deep medicine.” They write that individuals can be healthy “only when the entire community is also healthy…this is achievable only through social, economic, political, ecological, and cosmological spheres working in an integrated fashion for the benefit of all.” This may remind older readers of the ideals of universal harmony and spiritual growth that marked the 1960s, but the authors are persuasive in most of their arguments about the deleterious physical and mental effects of capitalism and colonialism.

A valiant effort to link medicine and injustice: thought-provoking, knowledgeable, and ripe for debate and further study.