BIOL 1500 Chapter Notes -Acinetobacter, Hemorrhoid, Abdominal Cavity
10 Apr 2014
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Human heart has number of valves that open and close approximately 2. 5 billion times over a lifetime. Heart valves are prone to failure for variety of reasons. Artificial heart valves have been developed to prolong life (haven"t created perfect artificial heart valves yet) Neese (physician) and william"s (evolutionary biologist) book questions why we get sick and propose six evolutionary causes of illness or disease: defense, infection, novel environment, genes, design compromise, and evolutionary legacy. Proximate explanation addresses how things work (ie. how diseases work or how body combats diseases) Darwinian medicine- new science that discusses disease from an evolutionary perspective: defenses versus defects. First cause of disease is result of body"s defenses against injury or infection pathogens-things that make you sick. Host defenses (fever, pain, nausea, coughing, sneezing) are treated as if they are bodily defects" that need to be fixed --correcting defect is usually good, but eliminating defense can be dangerous.
