Medicine, Evolution, and Natural Selection: An Historical Overview (original) (raw)
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Darwinian medicine--An evolutionary perspective on health and disease
SAMJ-South …, 2007
"Evolutionary theory, which gave rise to a new discipline named Darwinian medicine, has had a major impact on modern medical research and practice. This paper focuses on phenomena such as evolved host defences, evolution of virulence, genetic conflicts with other organisms, adaptations to novel environments, and tradeoffs and constraints in biological systems."
Darwin, evolution, and medicine: historical and contemporary perspectives
Handbook of Evolutionary Thinking in the Sciences, edited by Heams, T., Huneman, P., Lecointre G., and Silberstein, M. , 2014
Monographs commemorating the work of Charles Darwin (1809–1882) are typically wide ranging when it comes to the topics on which the theory of evolution has thrown some light. The influence of evolutionary thought on medicine was, until recently, often left in the dark, however. Yet evolutionary biology has crossed path with medicine more than once during the last 150 years, and the changing nature of these interactions has only begun to be examined historically and philosophically. In this chapter, after surveying the reception of Darwin’s work by medical doctors in the late 19th century and the relation between evolutionary thinking and eugenics, I argue that distinguishing ‘evolutionary’ from ‘Darwinian’ medicine will help us assess the variety of roles that evolutionary explanations can play in a number of medical contexts. Because the boundaries of ‘evolutionary’ and ‘Darwinian’ medicine overlap to some extent, they are best described as distinct ‘research traditions’ rather than as competing paradigms. But while evolutionary medicine does not stand out as a new scientific field of its own, Darwinian medicine is united by a number of distinctive theoretical and methodological claims. For example, evolutionary medicine and Darwinian medicine can be distinguished with respect to the styles of evolutionary explanations they employ. While the former primarily involves ‘forward looking’ explanations, the latter depends mostly on ‘backward looking’ explanations. A forward looking explanation tries to predict the effects of ongoing evolutionary processes on human health and disease in contemporary environments (e.g., hospitals). In contrast, a backward looking explanation typically applies evolutionary principles from the vantage point of humans’ distant biological past (i.e. the Pleistocene) in order to assess present states of health and disease. Both approaches, however, are ultimately concerned with the prevention and control of human diseases. In conclusion, I raise some concerns about the claim that ‘nothing in medicine makes sense except in the light of evolution’.
Medicine in the Light of Evolution
Genes
Evolutionary medicine applies the principles of evolutionary biology to understand why we get sick rather than how, and it has undergone an exponential growth since the early 1990s [...]
All sorts and conditions Of famous physicians, Came hurrying 'round at a trot ±A. A. Milne, 1927 Academics, popular writers, and publishers enjoy uneasy relations ranging from complicity to contempt, but face the common challenge of finding book titles that are both new and true to the contents. Thus, the appearance of a book juxtaposing the words``evolutionary'' and`m edicine'' is likely attributable to slick marketing designed to exploit simultaneously the recent vogue for trite adaptationist explanations for what humans do and that peculiar Western obsession with what physicians do. In fact, while the title is not new (Lappe, 1994) it is honest, and the contributions to this volume (the second published on this theme by Oxford University Press) (see Stearns, 1999) are more synthetic, of broader scope, and bring more types of data to bear than any previous work. The editors make available in one volume a stimulating series of topically focused, empirically compelling, and theoretically sophisticated arguments for why an evolutionary perspective should be adopted in finding solutions to a variety of medical``problems.'' This collection marks a significant moment in science, at which the synthesis of biomedical and evolutionary biocultural understandings of humanity begins in earnest. One must ask why such a synthesis has been so long in coming and remains so piecemeal? Darwin and Wallace finally committed a compelling theory about the mechanisms of evolution to print over 140 years ago (Darwin, 1859). Both the idea of evolution and the practice of evidence-based medicine date from quite some time earlier. The central problem has been that while most twentieth century health practitioners readily accepted the postulate that human susceptibility to disease is a product of evolution, it was by no means clear how such a view could contribute directly to the development of interventions to promote, maintain, and restore health. For many years, the irrefutable evidence of the benefits of western biomedicine blinded physicians to the possibility that some diseases are culture-bound constructs and that modern life may entail threats to health as well as benefits. The environment was viewed as important to the success of pathogens but not the patient and a bourgeois focus on the individual experience of disease and the interpretation of symptoms prevailed. The recent shift toward broader ecological definitions of health, the
Origins and History of Darwinian Medicine
Contemporary Darwinian medicine is a still-expanding new discipline whose principal aim is to arrive at an evolutionary understanding of aspects of the body that leave it vulnerable to disease. Historically, there was a precedent; between 1880 and 1940 several scientists tried to develop a general evolutionary theory of disease as arising from deleterious traits that escape elimination by natural selection. In contrast, contemporary Darwinian medicine uses evolutionary theory to consider all the possible reasons why selection has left human vulnerable to a disease.
Evolutionary Medicine: The Ongoing Evolution of Human Physiology and Metabolism
Physiology
The field of evolutionary medicine uses evolutionary principles to understand changes in human anatomy and physiology that have occurred over time in response to environmental changes. Through this evolutionary-based approach, we can understand disease as a consequence of anatomical and physiological “trade-offs” that develop to facilitate survival and reproduction. We demonstrate how diachronic study of human anatomy and physiology is fundamental for an increased understanding of human health and disease.
Making evolutionary biology a basic science for medicine
New applications of evolutionary biology in medicine are being discovered at an accelerating rate, but few physicians have sufficient educational background to use them fully. This article summarizes suggestions from several groups that have considered how evolutionary biology can be useful in medicine, what physicians should learn about it, and when and how they should learn it. Our general conclusion is that evolutionary biology is a crucial basic science for medicine. In addition to looking at established evolutionary methods and topics, such as population genetics and pathogen evolution, we highlight questions about why natural selection leaves bodies vulnerable to disease. Knowledge about evolution provides physicians with an integrative framework that links otherwise disparate bits of knowledge. It replaces the prevalent view of bodies as machines with a biological view of bodies shaped by evolutionary processes. Like other basic sciences, evolutionary biology needs to be taught both before and during medical school. Most introductory biology courses are insufficient to establish competency in evolutionary biology. Premedical students need evolution courses, possibly ones that emphasize medically relevant aspects. In medical school, evolutionary biology should be taught as one of the basic medical sciences. This will require a course that reviews basic principles and specific medical applications, followed by an integrated presentation of evolutionary aspects that apply to each disease and organ system. Evolutionary biology is not just another topic vying for inclusion in the curriculum; it is an essential foundation for a biological understanding of health and disease.