Experimental Man, New Book, Is Due Out In March
My next book is almost out - check it out at http://www.experimentalman.com. Thanks to everyone who helped!!!
Also, come to the launch parties:
March 16: New York, 6-8 pm, Mug Lounge, 446 East 13th Street (at Avenue A), New York, NY, www.mugnyc.com
March 19: San Francisco, 6-8 pm, Bubble Lounge, 714 Montgomery Street, San Francisco, CA, www.bubblelounge.com
For other events, lectures, and parties go to the Experimental Man website.
Here is the description of the book from the publisher:
In EXPERIMENTAL MAN: What One Man's Body Reveals About His Future, Your Health, and Our Toxic World (Wiley, March, 2009, $25.95 / Cloth; ISNB: 978-0-470-17678-4) Duncan takes "guinea pig" journalism to the very edge of science, building on award-winning articles he wrote for National Geographic and Wired, in which he was tested for hundreds of chemical toxins - from pesticides to plastic additives - and millions of genetic markers associated with disease, emotions, and other traits.
Expanding on these tests, he examines his genes, environment, brain, and body, exploring what they reveal about his and his family's future health, beliefs, attitudes, and behavior, and his ancestry, as well as the profound impact of this new self-knowledge on what it means to be human.
Michael Pollan calls the book: "a simple but elegant conceit that yields a rich trove of information and insight about how we live now." Wired co-founding editor Kevin Kelly says: "It's not often you get to read a book mailed back from the future."
Duncan weaves personal stories relating to his tests - such as growing up near a toxic waste dump in Kansas, and his grandmother's bout with breast cancer - with visits to cutting-edge scientists and labs around the world. In an effort to humanize the science, Duncan uses real people to explain the emerging revolution of personalized medicine: health care designed to treat and predict the future health of individuals, rather than the current one-size-fits-all.
Tests include MRI scans of his brain that assess everything from belief in God to altruism and greed; surprising genetic and whole-body results for heart attack; and ground breaking reporting on the impact of the environment on our cells and bodies. He compares his genetic code to a T-Rex, tests his proteome (all of the proteins in his blood), creates an immortal line of his cells, and much more.
Duncan shares the story of a rare genetic disorder in his brother, and gets startling news about his own potential longevity in a first-time-ever test. Finally, he provides a "consumer reports" assessment of which tests are useful and ready, and which ones are not. The book also asks a basic philosophical question: do we want to know so much about ourselves?
Experimental Man Is Interactive Online: this book is running another experiment in publishing by creating a website that will feature not only the massive quantity of data produced by the author's testing, but will be a participatory, interactive portal for information on testing, the state of the science, and other features. A joint project with the Center for Life Science Policy at UC Berkeley, the Experimental Man Project can be found at www.experimentalman.com.
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