The Enlightenment of Evolutionary Medicine

Darwin’s evolution theory serves as the basis to understand biology and medicine. In addition to fossil evidence used by Darwin and his contemporaries, advances in genomics allowed the tracing of gene sequences. Understanding human evolution further allowed us to re-evaluate our body’s maladaptation due to rapid environmental and cultural changes, including anxiety, fever, pain, vomiting as well as menstrual blood loss, increases in reproductive tissue cancers, and dystocia in human females. The talk will discuss the relationship between evolution and acute infectious diseases, including HIV resistance, and why the new coronavirus is not man-made. We will further discuss the relationship between evolution and chronic diseases, including why many modern people are obese and our increased risk of diabetes. Cancer development can be explained as somatic cell evolution, starting from cancer stem cell mutations to developing resistance against cancer therapies. Applying evolutionary concepts in medical research, one can discover new hormones and receptors based on their co-evolution, and the development of bionics based on unique characteristics evolved in diverse organisms. Beyond biology, Darwin’s theory explains the evolution of languages and memes such as currencies and religions. During future evolution, the application of artificial intelligence and big data algorithms could guide our “free will”.