Bacteria are disturbingly, ferociously, uncannily successful. They dominate the cellular world. We think of them as pathogens—bartonella, pneumococcus, salmonella—because a few of them cause disease. But our skin, our guts, and our mouths are teeming with several billion bacteria that cause no disease whatsoever. (Science writer Ed Yong’s seminal book I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life provides a panoramic view of our intimate and generally symbiotic pact with bacteria.) In fact, bacteria are either harmless or actually helpful. In the gut, they aid
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