The hidden mass extinction happening inside your body

our Twitter (X) feedView our Youtube channelView our Instagram feedView our Substack feedView our Spotify feed Dr. Martin Blaser explains how modern life is wiping out the microbes humans evolved with, and what early antibiotics and diet may mean for our health. Blaser holds the Henry Rutgers Chair of the Human Microbiome at Rutgers University, where he also serves as Professor of Medicine and Pathology & Laboratory Medicine, and as[…] Martin J.

The director of Donnie Darko on why the film is so misunderstood There's a mass extinction happening inside your body. Martin Blaser is a physician and microbiologist who has spent over 30 years studying the microbes that live on and in us. He's also the author of "Missing Microbes" and co-author of the 2025 paper "The Invisible Extinction." Martin Blaser: Farmers feed antibiotics to their farm animals to fatten them up.

At the moment I said that, I thought to myself, well, I wonder if that's what we're doing to our kids. Because of changes in human society and human medicine, we have been losing more and more of our ancestral microbes. And that loss has consequence.

You can make a list of what are the diseases that have risen dramatically since World War II. If you change the microbiome during early life, there's the potential that there'll be some kinds of mismatches. It takes time for big ideas to take hold.

Marvin Liyanage: This is Curiosity Lab on Big Think. And today I'm talking to Dr. He's a professor who has been working for over 30 years to study small organisms that live on and in our bodies.

And he's also the author of a book called Missing Microbes. Thanks for taking the time to talk about your research. Marvin Liyanage: Most of us have heard that there's a mass extinction happening.