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Jerry Coyne on Why Darwinian Medicine Is so…so…Amusing


Jerry Coyne has a post on his recent conversion to Darwinian Medicine:

If you’ve followed this website, you’ll know that I was once down on the practical uses of evolution: I thought of the discipline more as a way to understand the world than to improve it. But I’ve changed my mind, largely at the instigation of Dave Hillis at the University of Texas at Austin, who has enlightened me about the real applications of evolution in medicine.

Coyne, a man not easily converted, was led to the belief that speculation about the Darwinian origins of disease can be of help to medicine. For example:

…the fact that malaria makes you prostrate, for instance, may actually be an adaptation of the malaria parasite to facilitate its spread; you’re more likely to be bitten by a mosquito, who transmits the parasite, if you’re laid out flat in bed…

Darwinian Medicine is a fertile science, and all sorts of insights emerge with surprising little thought and even less science. For example, the corollary to Coyne’s “malaria makes you motionless so mosquitoes can bite” would be what one might call Egnor’s corollary to Coyne’s malaria hypothesis: the shaking chills that accompany a malaria relapse may be a human evolutionary adaptation against malaria: a mosquito trying to land on a shaking malaria victim is like Tom Cruise trying to land a plane on an aircraft carrier in choppy seas. Lying prostrate with shaking chills? It’s an evolutionary struggle!
Darwinian Medicine is of value to medical education in only one way: laughter is the best medicine.
Cross-posted on Egnorance

Michael Egnor

Senior Fellow, Center for Natural & Artificial Intelligence
Michael R. Egnor, MD, is a Professor of Neurosurgery and Pediatrics at State University of New York, Stony Brook, has served as the Director of Pediatric Neurosurgery, and award-winning brain surgeon. He was named one of New York’s best doctors by the New York Magazine in 2005. He received his medical education at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and completed his residency at Jackson Memorial Hospital. His research on hydrocephalus has been published in journals including Journal of Neurosurgery, Pediatrics, and Cerebrospinal Fluid Research. He is on the Scientific Advisory Board of the Hydrocephalus Association in the United States and has lectured extensively throughout the United States and Europe.

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