Lifelong asthmatic Moises Velasquez-Manoff infected himself with parasites to improve his health. He describes the latest thinking of scientists who suspect we’ve been too thorough about cleansing our bodies of microbes and bacteria. His new book is An Epidemic of Absence.
Moises Velasquez-Manoff has written extensively, mostly on science and environment, for The Christian Science Monitor. His work has also appeared in The New York Times Magazine and the Chicago Tribune, among other publications. He holds a master of arts, with a concentration in science writing, from the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. He was born in New York City, raised in New Mexico, and educated in California. As a toddler, he jumped rope in the Lower East Side; as a kid, he frolicked in the mountain streams and desert shrublands of northern New Mexico; as an adult, he swam the frigid Pacific. A long time ago, he was mysteriously bent on becoming a farmer, then a zoologist, and finally, as a young adult, he dreamed of writing novels. Instead he worked as an icecream scooper, busboy, waiter, cook, bartender, and graphic designer, among other jobs, before gravitating to journalism. He lives in New York City. An Epidemic of Absence is his first book.