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Physicians and scientists are increasingly recognising the importance of an evolutionary perspective in studying the aetiology, prevention, and treatment of human disease. The increasing prominence of genetics in medicine is further adding to the interest in evolutionary medicine. Evolution and Medicine clearly lays out the principles of evolutionary medicine in a way that will appeal to clinicians, medical students, and biomedical research scientists. These principles include variation and selection, the genetic basis of evolutionary change, life history theory and the evolutionary biology of aging, developmental plasticity, host-pathogen coevolution, and the effects of environmental change (which, for humans, is largely due to man-made, cultural change). Evolution and Medicine intersperses presentations of evolutionary concepts with discussions of diseases that illustrate the application of these concepts, and clearly show the relevance of evolutionary biology to medical education, research, and practice.
This accessible text is written for physicians, biomedical scientists, and both premedical and medical students. It is also ideally placed to cater for an anticipated expansion in seminars and in undergraduate and continuing medical education courses on this topic.
1. Evolution and medicine
2. Human demography, history, and disease
3. Evolutionary genetics
4. Cystic fibrosis
5. Life histories and the evolutionary biology of aging
6. Cancer
7. Host-pathogen coevolution
8. Sexually transmitted diseases
9. Malaria
10. Gene-culture coevolution: lactase persistence
11. Man-made diseases
Robert Perlman received an MD and a PhD (Biochemistry) from the University of Chicago and has had a career in academic medicine. He did research and taught at the National Institutes of Health, Harvard Medical School, and the University of Illinois at Chicago before returning to the University of Chicago. He has carried out research in a variety of fields, including the regulation of gene expression in bacteria and the biology of the sympathetic nervous system. He has been actively involved in medical education for most of his academic career and has taught courses on evolutionary medicine at the University of Chicago for over ten years.
