PSYC 3100 Lecture Notes - Toxic Shock Syndrome, Bubonic Plague, Evolutionary Medicine
16 Sep 2013
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At least 1 external reference (1 is fine) Health from darwinian point of view: how well are we adapted to the current environment, 3 or 4 best-selling drugs. Cholesterol drugs (13 billion dollars a year) We didn"t evolve for sweet and fatty food; we evolved for scare food. Ulcer drugs (6 billion dollars a year) Depression drugs (4-5 billion dollars a year) Allergies (3 billion for prescription, 5 billion for non-prescription) Don"t seem to be adjusted to the environment. Infectious diseases (pathogens) are a major source of human suffering and death. If you examine opposition (organisms), you learn a lot about natural selection. How they oppose us, their life cycle, how their adaptations help them: only try to attack body when there are a lot of them (attack in mass) Darwinian medicine: we often make it easier for pathogens to fuck us, doesn"t see most symptoms as annoyances like you do.
