HSCI 216 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Evolutionary Medicine, Antimicrobial Resistance, Pleiotropy
20 May 2020
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Document Summary
Why isn"t the body designed better: goal of evolutionary or darwinian medicine is to make medicine more effective in its ability to help individuals, it has nothing to do with benefiting species. Medicine uses some evolution. : antibiotic resistance, evolutionary genetics, anthropology (human phylogeny) Missing. : host & pathogen arms race, evolutionary genetics, evolution & behaviour, epidemiology. New: disease is not shaped by selection, but vulnerability to disease is, ns can help explain maladaptation & adaptation, when heritable variations in a trait influence reproductive success, the trait will inevitably change over generations. Vulnerable to disease bc ns is too slow: mismatch: body never designed to cope in novel enviro (ie. foods, lack of exercise), explains most chronic diseases, fulfilled desires killing us, competition with fast evolving organisms (ie. pathogens, animals). Selection is controlled: every trait is a trade-off (could be better, but at what cost?) (ie. sickle-cell anemia & malaria), constraints on ns (can never restart), mutation, weakness of ns, happenstance.
