“Gut Bugs” and Michael Pollan’s Magic Schoolbus

“… we’ve just spent the better part of a century doing our unwitting best to wreck the human-associated microbiota with a multifronted war on bacteria and a diet notably detrimental to its well-being. Researchers now speak of an impoverished ‘Westernized microbiome’ and ask whether the time has come to embark on a project of ‘restoration ecology’ — not in the rain forest or on the prairie but right here at home, in the human gut.”
 — -In this week’s New York Times Magazine cover story, Michael Pollan shrinks to the size of an amoeba and traverses the human body: “Some of My Best Friends Are Germs.”