Evolutionary medicine is a rapidly growing field that uses knowledge from modern evolutionary biology to better understand, prevent, and treat disease. It examines why our bodies are what they are, which allows us to have a better understanding of factors that make us particularly vulnerable to certain diseases or types of injuries. Evolutionary medicine factors prominently in discussions of antibiotics, viruses, vaccines, obesity, and the recent growth in auto-immune diseases.

Rui Diogo, associate professor of anatomy at Howard University’s College of Medicine and resource faculty member at George Washington University’s Center for the Advanced Study of Hominid Paleobiology, offers a fascinating discussion of the medical and societal implications of evolutionary medicine, drawing on examples ranging from the historical origin of pandemics to Covid, from the history of the first vaccines to state-of-the-art studies on cancer and social networks, and what the study of other primates  and non-Western humans can tell us about the future of medicine and our well-being in general.

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