Evolutionary Medicine – A Great Way to Teach Biology

Abstract

Great teaching is often all about the questions posed to students. When learners get their teeth into an interesting question, they grow as they chew on it. As physicians, we have discovered that disease makes more sense if you ask evolutionary questions, and these questions make a great starting point for science education. One of Darwin's two main questions was how species are related to each other. His answer was that all organisms have common ancestors. This is the foundation for studies of phylogeny. To teach phylogenetic trees, you can use canids or birds, but students are particularly interested if they are tracing the origins of HIV or tuberculosis, or the history of human traits, such as the appendix. Darwin's other question was about why bodies work so well. His answer was natural selection. The characteristics of individuals who have more offspring than others become more common over the generations. This explains why kidneys, hearts, eyes, and brains are so astoundingly well suited to their purposes. As physicians, we constantly confront a very different question. If natural selection is so …