ANTH 2 Lecture Notes - Lecture 25: Margie Profet, Evolutionary Medicine, Smoke Detector
6 Aug 2020
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Evolutionary (or darwinian) medicine: tries to understand the nature of disease by examining why it exists, rather than how it works; ignored by darwin, pasteur, eg. - fever as adaptation, not the how question, but the why question. Second line is to expel unwanted stuff once ingested; allergies as evolved smoke detector. 1941- all bacterial infections were treatable with penicillin; by 1944, resistance was seen. Methicillin in 1990s in one year in the us, resistance went from 5% to 80% Today in us, 50% mortality rate for people who contract multiple-resistant tb. An arms race, as in the red queen. Rid body of toxins (menstrual blood better than circulating blood at killing. In other mammals, degree of menstruation proportional to threat of sperm-borne diseases; human continuous receptivity (always having sex) makes us vulnerable to such pathogens. Other mammals don"t menstruate like humans do, and if they do it is very minor.
