Book Review by Joyce Miller, AAMC Medical Librarian

The Autoimmune Epidemic: Bodies Gone Haywire in a World Out of Balance—and the Cutting Edge Science that Promises Hope

—Author Donna Jackson Nakazawa (Touchstone/Simon & Schuster, February 2008). Available at Amazon ($16.50).

Donna Jackson Nakazawa has just about done the impossible! As a medical librarian for the past 25 years, I was curious as to how a lay person could possibly tackle the complexities of the workings of the immune system and the myriad autoimmune diseases that spin off from a system gone awry. Although everyone should read this book, I think the main audience for this book should be all physicians! Donna's research is impeccable—there are no flaws in her interpretation of very complex medical studies. This highly intelligent work has taken the research and made it understandable without "dumbing it down"—and that's harder to do than to write a medical text. Donna writes with a beautiful, natural flair and sprinkles the book with real people (including herself) who have struggled with autoimmune diseases, and explains the synergistic interaction of our toxic, polluted environment with genetics, and perhaps a "triggering event" such as a virus that presents the unsuspecting individual with a "barreling effect" that sends the body into sometimes a fight for one's life as the body attacks its own cells. That these diseases have increased so dramatically over the past few decades gives us all cause to pause and question what we are exposed to environmentally on a daily basis. I urge every physician to read this book.