Darwinian Medicine

3 Units

Darwinian medicine deals with evolutionary aspects of modern human disease. It applies the concepts and methods of evolutionary biology to the question of why we are vulnerable to disease. Darwinian (or evolutionary) medicine proposes several general hypotheses about disease causation including disease as evolutionary legacy and design compromise, the result of a novel environment, a consequence of genetic adaptation, the result of infectious organisms' evolutionary adaptations, and disease symptoms as manifestation of defense mechanisms. It proposes that evolutionary ideas can explain, help to prevent and perhaps help to treat some diseases. This course presents the basic logic of Darwinian medicine and evaluates hypotheses about specific diseases that illustrate each of the hypotheses about disease causation. Recommended preparation: ANTH 103 . Offered as ANTH 302 and ANTH 402 .