Psychology 3228 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Evolutionary Medicine, Dsm-5, Mental Health Professional

• School: Western University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: Psychology 3228
• Professor: Scott Mac Dougall- Shackleton

Document Summary

Darwinian medicine proposes that evolutionary biology can aid in this process. Understand responses to disease as potential adaptive responses. Why we get sick: the new science of darwinian medicine (1996) nesse and williams. Since publication consideration of evolutionary biology in relation to disease rapid growing: most widely researched in regard to infectious disease, genetic disorders. Host mounts an immune response to eliminate the costs of hosting the pathogen. All else being equal, pathogens with higher within-host reproductive rates should be transmitted to hosts more effectively. However, too rapid a reproduction rate may debilitate the host so much that transmission is reduced. Hosts and parasites are in an evolutionary arms race. Single-celled microbes mostly harmless in gut or on skin. Results in fever and reduced iron in bloodstream. Arms race with pathogens hiv and aids. Lymphocytes produce antibodies that label antigens, which are then destroyed by macrophages. A virus that can cheat the immune system.