Evolutionary Medicine

With recent updates, the second edition of Evolutionary Medicine presents general principles of evolutionary biology and organismal design, then applies them to medical issues where these principles bring useful insights.

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Evolutionary thinking provides insights into many different areas in the research and practice of medicine and public health. It takes specialties such as medical microbiology, epidemiology, oncology, gynecology, and psychiatry that had become increasingly siloed and places them in a larger framework. This foundational structure enables students to view medical knowledge as an integrated whole, underpinned by general principles rather than a loose collection of disparate facts. The discipline of evolutionary medicine continues to advance rapidly as new results come in showing where the insights pay off and where they do not. Its conceptual foundations have also been strengthened in papers not yet reflected in the textbooks, so a new edition is therefore timely. At the same time, the teaching of evolutionary medicine has also been steadily gaining momentum both in courses that prepare undergraduates for medical school in North America and in other contexts worldwide.

Evolutionary Medicine is intended for undergraduate students preparing for careers in medicine and public health, students in schools of medicine and public health, and medical professionals curious about the insights that evolutionary thinking can bring to their field. It will also be relevant to students and researchers in the fields of evolutionary biology, anthropology, developmental biology, and genetics. It highlights the most important insights in a relatively brief and compelling book that does not attempt encyclopedic coverage of a rapidly changing field.