Lappe believes that new adaptive policies that actually understand how microbes will react to the changes they create will be more effective in slowing the evolution of many microbes which will give our treatments a higher success rate and put a stop to the current influx of antibiotic resistant microbes. .
The book covers several major issues, including ecosystem disruption and disease, attacks against the self, cancer, malaria, and AIDS. The impact of humans on the environment greatly contributes to the dissemination of infectious diseases. Human population is constantly growing, forcing them into new environments and introducing virgin populations to new microbes, which can be extremely virulent. As a result of the destruction of their ecosystems, many animals have been forced to take over human ecosystems with disastrous results. Wild animals carry a myriad of microbes and are extremely unpredictable. As a result, new diseases are being introduced to the human population and old diseases are evolving to continue their assault. An example of this is the wild fox and coyote problem and the Rabies cases that they bring. Lappe presents a range of illnesses, from AIDS and cancer to asthma and malaria, to illustrate the evolutionary processes involving humans and pathogens. The chapter on AIDS contains some controversial material, however, it needs to be placed before the researcher so that "no stone is left unturned" in this search for the cause of AIDS and a search for a cure or vaccine. "Because of its newness in the human population and its high mutation rate, it is likely that the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that causes AIDS is undergoing evolutionary changes even as this is being written." That in itself is frightening when one thinks of how research is conducted. If the virus is evolving faster than we can research it, then we are losing the battle until such a time that the evolutionary process crosses itself and begins to cancel out its progress.
