The Evolution & Medicine Review

The deep reach of the pharmaceutical industry into academic and clinical medicine sets up ample opportunity for conflicts of interest on the part of biomedical researchers. To minimize the risks that such conflicts could introduce bias into the scientific literature, most publications impose reporting regulations that make transparent any financial stake that an individual researcher [...]

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Mouse ‘models’ for psychiatric disorders, strains of mice genetically engineered by ‘knocking out’ a specific gene that mediates expression of the disorder, provide invaluable information regarding the genetic, developmental, physiological, and neurological causes of mental diseases in humans.  One of the first mouse models relevant to autism was generated via knockout of a gene [...]

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As most readers of this website are well aware, antibiotic resistance poses a considerable problem for public health, and we are in serious need of new approaches for dealing with this threat. One possible direction could be to use drugs such as quorum-sensing disruptors (e.g. Dong et al. 2001 Nature) that target disrupt bacterial cooperation, [...]

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A recent article by Hood and Jenkins provides an overview of a May 2007 Meeting on Evolutionary Medicine organized by Diddahally Govindaraju, Peter Byers and Stephen Stearns and hosted by the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center.  
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Death is one of the most mysterious and inexorable problems in biology. How does life end? What is the true nature of death? Is it absolute—a fundamental state? Or is it relative and a matter of degree? Can it be defined as part of some basic reality, a detail of an unknown whole rather than [...]

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Some medical schools are beginning to think about a formal curse in evolutionary medicine. But teaching time appears to be “precious” and curriculum committees need guidance as to when can they donate a few hours to our discipline. In general most traditional medical curricula focus on the preclinical sciences in the first years and clinical [...]

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Over the past 150,000 years humans have manifestly been migratory, travelling into vastly different climatic regions of the globe. Darwinian evolution can lead to genetic differences in populations living in different climates, but any mechanism that can protect individuals from relatively short-term changes in living conditions that differ from those in which previous generations lived [...]

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The President’s Council on Bioethics was established by President Bush in 2001 to “advise the President on bioethical issues that may emerge as a consequence of advances in biomedical science and technology.” Under the chairmanship of Leon Kass, the Council published a number of reports on subjects such as cloning and stem cell research. In [...]

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