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

by Nathan H. Lents

Human anatomy is a clumsy hodgepodge of adaptations and maladaptations. We have pointless bones and muscles, underwhelming senses, and joints that don’t quite keep us upright. Then there’s our diet. Whereas most animals do just fine eating the same thing day in and day out, we humans have to have ridiculously varied meals in order to get all the nutrients we need. Most of the contents of our genomes are completely useless, and occasionally they are actually harmful. (We even carry around thousands of dead viruses tucked in the DNA of every one of our cells, and we spend our lifetimes dutifully replicating these carcasses.) And there are yet other, even more astounding imperfections: We are incredibly inefficient at our ultimate goal of making more of ourselves, and we have immune systems that attack our own bodies, just one of many design-related diseases.