Question

1. Richard Dawkins interviews Randolph Nesse on evolutionary medicine (46 min):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAOhOhJr-gM

​Answer the following

1. Why should doctors understand natural selection?

2. What is "badly designed" about our forearms? Why?

3. Why do we all use the QWERTY keyboard? Is it the best arrangement of keys?

4. Why don't we "see" the blind spot in our field of view?

5. Is the body a machine? Why or why not?

6. What are the two different kinds of problems people bring to their doctors?

7. What would a life without pain be like? Why?

8. Why do we get fevers?

9. How does a lizard get a fever?

10. What is the "smoke detector principle"? Give an example.

11. How are our needs and motivations, shaped by natural selection, killing us now?

12. Why are our intestines all tangled up?

13. Why do so many people have back problems (in evolutionary terms)?

14. What paragraph is missing from every section of medical textbooks?

15. What are telomeres?

16. Why didn't natural selection

17. Are we designed (by natural selection) to be healthy and happy? Explain.

18. Why do we age?

19. If there weren't any aging, how long would we live?

20. How can a lethal gene increase in frequency?

21. Would life be great if we didn't have anxiety? Why or why not?

22. What are panic attacks (in evolutionary terms)?

23. "In a nutshell", what is Darwinian medicine?

24. Why hasn't natural selection made us better than we are? (4 reasons)

25. In what two ways do we misunderstand the body?

26. Why does natural selection "discriminate against men"? (I.e., Why do males tend to die sooner than females?)

27. ...Is #26 only a human phenomenon? Where else is this pattern seen?

28. What is a possible evolutionary explanation for menopause?

29. What has natural selection designed us for, health or reproduction?

30. From an evolutionary point of view, why is there so much suffering in life?