In Experimental Man, award-winning journalist, public radio correspondent, and bestselling science author David Ewing Duncan puts every aspect of his physical makeup under the microscope. His mission, as perhaps the most tested healthy person in history, is to discover what cutting-edge medical technology can tell him, and us, about our future health; the effects of living in a toxin-soaked world; and how genes, proteins, personal behavior, our brains, and an often-hostile environment interact within our bodies.
Taking thousands of tests over the course of two years – genes, environment, brain and body – Duncan provides descriptions and explanations of the science behind these tests, and assesses what's useful and what's not, and what the future will bring for predictive and preventive health.
Bio
David Ewing Duncan
David Ewing Duncan is an award-winning, best-selling author of six books and numerous essays, articles and short stories, and a television, radio and film producer and correspondent. He is the co-host of NPR's Biotech Nation.
Duncan's most recent book is Experimental Man: What one man’s body reveals about his future, your health, and our toxic world (John Wiley). His last book was Masterminds: Genius, DNA and the Quest to Rewrite Life (Harper Perennial). He also wrote the international bestseller Calendar: Humanity's Epic Struggle to Determine a True and Accurate Year (Harper-Collins/Avon), published in 19 languages, and a bestseller in 14 countries.
Duncan is a Contributing Editor to Wired, and Discover, and a science columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, a commentator for NPR's Morning Edition and co-host of BioTech Nation on NPR. He has been a special correspondent and producer for ABC's Nightline and 20/20, and a producer for Discovery Television. He is a correspondent for NOVA's ScienceNow!. He is a regular contributor to National Geographic, Fortune and MIT Technology Review, and was a longtime correspondent for Life.
He also writes for Harper's, Atlantic Monthly, Smithsonian, Outside, The Telegraph, The Guardian, The Washington Post Book World, and The New York Times, among others. He contributes to the Dialogues column for Discover.
Extent of continuing physical, emotional, mental, and social ability to cope with one's environment. Good health is harder to define than bad health (which can be equated with presence of disease) because it must convey a more positive concept than mere absence of disease, and there is a variable area between health and disease. A person may be in good physical condition but have a cold or be mentally ill. Someone may appear healthy but have a serious condition (e.g., cancer) that is detectable only by physical examination or diagnostic tests or not even by these.