Body of Work

“Guinea pig journalist” puts his chassis through the wringer for science

Comments (0) By Robrt L. Pela Thursday, Jul 2 2009

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You think you’ve got the whole biotechnology thing squared away, then David Ewing Duncan goes and publishes another book. The latest from Duncan, an American journalist whose beat is the environment and the development of green technologies, is Experimental Man: What One Man’s Body Reveals About His Future, Your Health, and Our Toxic World. In its pages, the host of National Public Radio’s Biotech Nation plumbs our depths -- and his! -- by exploring his genetic structure to determine what it reveals about his and his family's future health, traits, and ancestry. By testing his own body, Duncan teaches us about how our own function in a toxic world. After submitting to hundreds of medical tests, he reveals the ways in which our increasingly hostile environment messes with our bodies and minds. And by treating this research as a colossal controlled experiment, he both informs and entertains us with the horrors and insights of “guinea pig journalism.”
Sat., July 4, 2 p.m., 2009