Evolutionary theory has allowed science to now have the means to branch together ideas that unifies all of the fields of naturalism into a single discipline. While you do not need evolution to understand how the stomach absorbs food, you can't explain why the intestines are so good at it, without evolution. In spite of this evolutionary medicine did not get started into the 80's and early 90's and only within the last 10 years has evolutionary perspective really helped to reduce suffering and risk of death.
Stearns and a long list of scientists presented their findings on this evolution-medicine link at the Arthur M. Sackler Colloquium in the spring of 2009. These are some of their conclusions.

* Humans evolved alongside beneficial bacteria and parasitic worms, and so our ancestors built up immunity to such bugs. But nowadays with increased hygiene, we've eliminated the bacteria and worms. The result: Since our immune systems aren’t used to these good bugs, our bodies fight them as foreigners. That can result in allergies, asthma and autoimmune diseases, such as Graves' disease in which a person has an overactive thyroid.
* Humans have higher rates of cancer than other species. One reason: We aren't adapted to the new risk factors of modern society, including tobacco, alcohol, a high-fat diet and contraceptives, researchers have found.
* Certain adaptations that once benefited us might be helping several ailments to persist in spite of, or perhaps because of, advancements in modern culture and medicine, according to researchers.
>Interbreeding: although world wide travel has lead to a mixing of races humans in more rural areas still tend to interbreed and world wide 10% of marriages are to first or second cousins. House of Habsburg is a good example of some of the negative consequences of interbreeding with recessive traits being more likely to get passed on.
>AutismandEvolution : Autism results from a battle of the sexes. Basically since females know that the child they are carrying is 100% they distribute all of their genes equally however such is not the case with males. Males never really being sure if the child their partner is carrying is really resulting in males sometimes releasing a little more in some areas kinda as markers of paternal certainty. For instance, when the paternal form of a gene on chromosome 15 gets expressed, and not the mother's, the resulting offspring will be more demanding, sleep poorly, want to suckle frequently and have a 40 percent to 80 percent chance of having autism as an adult. (Humans normally have 46 chromosomes in each cell.)
We're trying to design ways to educate physicians who will have a broader perspective and not think of the human body as a perfectly designed machine," Ellison said. "Our biology is the result of many evolutionary trade-offs, and understanding these histories and conflicts can really help the physician understand why we get sick and what we might do to stay healthy."

Tags: ongoing evolution, genes, medicine, health, autism,

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