Evolutionary Medicine

There is a relatively new movement in medicine. It got a big boost last summer from the American Association of Medical Collieges. Since medicine is an applied science there needs to be more basic science in premed students, particularly evolution. There is even a call to have questions in the MCAT (Medical College Admission Test)on evolution. I have just finished a book called Evolution RX by William Meller MD. It is basic evolutionary medicine aimed at the lay person more, but it is inspiring and so easy to understand. The jest of evolutionary medicine is to understand how we function, heal and think we need to understand how we evolved. If we understand that then diet, injuries, infections, psychology and other diseases make sense, because as it now stands in medicine nothing has any meaning or makes sense without it. It is a collection of disjointed facts. Evolutionary medicine makes us and our diseases understandable and meaningful. It exponses some of the traditional medicines failures and alternative medicines complete failures. But it also explains why people use them and cling to them. Why we are loosing the battle against infection, why diabetes, sickle cell disease and others are the way they are and how we should attack them. The fossil genes of retroviruses in our genome make up 8% of it. This is an exciting time in medicine because we can now put all of the development of humans, diseases, psychology into a explaination that makes sense. It has and will give us clues into how we should treat or manage diseases. I am so excited about it I am developing a lecture seris course for my residents. Hopefully it will also counter the CAM that is infiltrating the medical curiculum. The creationists in medicine will not like it, but mother nature cares little for what we think or believe. But we had better understand and work with her or she will get us back. Stay Tuned.

Peace
Skeptical DoDo