Messy: The Power of Disorder to Transform Our Lives

by Tim Harford

These discoveries hint at what might be possible as we begin to understand our microbiota (the microbes that live on and inside us) and their microbiome (their genes). The view used to be that the human body was under assault from bacteria, and that antibiotics were an unalloyed good, albeit one to be used with care lest bacteria evolve resistance. But recently medical researchers have realized that our relationship with bacteria is more complex than that. The average human is host to ten thousand bacterial species. These germs outnumber the cells of our own body, they weigh a total of about three pounds, and they play a crucial role in keeping our metabolism ticking. Some bacteria are dangerous, some are harmless passengers, and some are beneficial. Some, such as H. pylori, can be dangerous or beneficial depending on the situation.3 Martin Blaser has become one of the leading champions of the view that our bacterial guests are starting to become less diverse, and that this thinning of the microbiome is doing us harm.