Oliver Broudy is the author of The Sensitives, published in 2020 by Simon & Schuster. He has written for Men’s Health, The New York Times, Mother Jones, and many other publications. His work has taken him to China, Afghanistan, New Zealand, and elsewhere. He has written about mega-pop stars, mega-sports stars, kung-fu, anarchy, and lots of weird medical conditions. He is a finalist for the National Magazine Award and his Amazon Singles have twice been named best Single of the year. Currently, he is at work on a book about the labor movement.
The Sensitives: The Rise of Environmental Illness and the Search for America’s Last Pure Place
by Oliver Broudy
Simon & Schuster, 2020
Somewhere in the piney wilds of northern Arizona a man has gone missing. His friends and followers fear he has committed suicide. For those of his peculiar tribe, bankrupted by medical bills, tormented by symptoms they cannot understand, dismissed as crazy by their own families, death is just the final step in a long retreat from a world that has become as alien and inhospitable as Mars.
Environmental Illness (EI) has been called the defining ailment of our time—not just because it is characterized by a violent reactivity to all the trappings of modernity (everything from the pesticides on our produce to the fire retardants in our electronics) but because, at a time when it has never been more difficult to distinguish between what is fact and what is distortion or mere hysteria, no one is sure if it exists.
In academia, medical journals and internet forums the debate rages—even as environmental regulations are being eviscerated, the chemical industry is releasing nearly four billion pounds of chemicals into the environment every year, and the prevalence of thyroid and liver cancer, autism, birth defects, and male reproductive problems is skyrocketing. Meanwhile, thousands of people suffering from EI, called “sensitives,” have withdrawn to the country’s few remaining unpeopled regions to construct frontier lives far from the stench of civilization.
One of these is the man who has gone missing, Brian Welsh, a leader among an online community of fellow sensitives he has never even met. The Sensitives takes us on a search for Welsh, through empty miles of primordial landscape and branching side paths into the past, where the history of charlatanism, German metaphysics, early American medicine, the origins of color, and a host of other fascinating subjects hold clues to a deeper sickness underlying modern healthcare itself—and what can be done to cure it.
“With a tone that is both thoughtful and humorous, The Sensitives provides a model for how history, philosophy, research, clinical practice, and—above all—patient experience, inform meaningful discourse about a disease that resists characterization at all stages.” —Science
“Broudy’s narrative faintly echo[es] Jack Kerouac’s On the Road – his voice is lyrical and edgy, sceptical and empathetic.” —The Times Literary Supplement
“Broudy’s writing inspires real empathy for the individuals he chronicles, individuals who can’t seem to get well or get help.” —The New York Times
“A thoroughly engaging investigation… Neither an invective of medical politics, nor a sideshow of eccentric recluses, The Sensitives pleads for understanding in a fight over a syndrome not yet understood.” —Shelf Awareness
“Learning about EI is fascinating and even infuriating, but the excursion and bonding experience between the author and his travel companion is even more intriguing. Over miles of open road, Broudy and James learn more about each other and themselves, and the reader is educated about a chemical threat that is ‘woven into the fabric of everyday life.’ The Sensitives is one road trip you’ll want to take.” —BookPage