Why Medicine Needs a Dose Of Evolution

“The fundamental answer to why so many humans are now getting sick from previously rare illnesses is that many of the body’s features were adapted in environments from which we evolved, but have become maladapted in the modern environments we have now created. This idea, known as the mismatch hypothesis, is the core of the new emerging field of evolutionary medicine, which applies evolutionary biology to health and disease.” (Daniel E. Lieberman)

Few words cause more terror in a doctor’s office, and are less likely to make you think about evolution, than “cancer.” If I were to receive a diagnosis of cancer tomorrow, my first concern would be to figure out how to read myself of the disease. I‘d want to know what kind of cells were cancerous, what mutations were causing them to divide out of control, and what medical interventions such as surgery, radiation, and the chemotherapy would have the best chance of killing those cells without killing me. The same would be true if I had a heart attack, painful tooth cavity, or a torn hamstring. When sick, I see a doctor, not an evolutionary biologist. By the same token, doctors have studied little if any evolutionary biology as part of their training. And why should they? Evolution, after all, is something that mostly occurred in the past, and today’s patients are not hunter gatherers, let alone Neanderthals. Someone with heart disease…