The Evolution and Medicine Review

Two new articles in Evolution, Medicine, & Public Health

The Editors — Thu, 09 May 2013 13:52:44 +0000

Book Review: The Fragile Wisdom by Grazyna Jasienska (Harvard University Press, 2013)Do unto others; First do no harm; Ask questions. Maxine Weinstein EMPH published 10 April 2013, 10.1093/emph/eot006 In this ambitious volume, Grazyna Jasienska poses a host of thoughtful questions, enough to keep a stable of researchers going for many lifetimes. The central query is whether [...]

Collection of 8 articles on evolutionary medicine published in BMC Medicine

The Editors — Fri, 03 May 2013 02:33:10 +0000

Evolutionary Medicine : clinical medicine from an evolutionary perspective Martin Brüne and Ze’ev Hochberg A Collection of 8 articles in BMC Medicine (open access) Developmental heterochrony and the evolution of autistic perception, cognition and behavior Bernard Crespi BMC Medicine 2013, 11:119 (2 May 2013) Evolutionary medicine – the quest for a better understanding of health, disease and prevention [...]

Evolution in medical school: Do we need more of it?

The Editors — Thu, 02 May 2013 00:52:29 +0000

Article in the Boston Globe by Kevin Hartnett April 29, 2013 We’re used to controversies around the teaching of evolution but here’s one place you might be surprised to learn Darwinian thinking is still struggling to take hold: medical schools. It’s not that the medical establishment doubts evolution, it’s just that traditionally it hasn’t viewed it as [...]

Evolved Genetic Variation as a Guide to the Evolution of Therapy

Neil Greenspan — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 20:04:19 +0000

In a previous post (http://evmedreview.com/?p=1034), I discussed a study from Stuart Orkin’s lab that illustrated the exploitation of genetic variants that influence a disease-related phenotype to design a possible therapy for a murine version of sickle cell disease. Increased fetal hemoglobin expression had been demonstrated to diminish the severity of sickle cell disease in mice, [...]

UCSF Evolution and Cancer Conference June 12-16 Early registration and abstracts accepted until May 10th

The Editors — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 01:24:42 +0000

The Second International Biannual Evolution and Cancer Conference, “From Unicellularity to Multicellularity and Back Again” will be at the University of California, San Francisco, June 12-16, 2013 (IBECC 2013). This will likely be the preeminent evolutionary medicine meeting in the USA during 2013. Following the success of the first IBECC in 2011, we are again bringing [...]

BBC article on helminth therapy for autoimmune disorders

The Editors — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 17:56:54 +0000

Worm therapy: Why parasites may be good for you By Rachel Nuwer on the BBC Webpage Early trials suggest a host of allergies and autoimmune ailments could be treated with worm therapy, or infection with live worm-like parasites. But will it ever reach the clinic? Jim Turk initially put his symptoms down to stress. The [...]

Grants available for evolutionary medicine research in Zurich

The Editors — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 19:08:31 +0000

The Centre for Evolutionary Medicine (ZEM), University of Zurich, is calling for grant applications. The applicants are free to submit any research project within the wider field of Evolutionary Medicine, preferably, but not exclusively, on the study of the evolution of human musculo-skeletal disease. Primary current ZEM research topics (which show the area of research [...]

Evolution and Cancer Conference at UCSF June 12-16

The Editors — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 15:46:19 +0000

From Unicellularity to Multicellularity and Back Again 2nd International Biannual Evolution and Cancer Conference at UCSF Registration now open Keynote talks by Mel Greaves and Anna Barker Foci: cancer suppression in the evolution of multicellularity and applying insights from the evolution of single cellular organisms to the study of cancer Sessions include: Insights from Experimental [...]

Paleofantasy: New book by Marlene Zuk

The Editors — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 14:43:05 +0000

Paleofantasy: What Evolution Really Tells Us about Sex, Diet, and How We Live By Marlene Zuk (Norton, 2013) Free sample from NCSE Review in Salon Review in the WSJ Review in Nature From the Norton Website: An exposé of pseudoscientific myths about our evolutionary past and how we should live today. We evolved to eat [...]

The Power of Graur to Explode ENCODE Using Incision and Derision

Neil Greenspan — Sat, 30 Mar 2013 17:02:27 +0000

The consortium of investigators known as ENCODE (ENCyclopedia Of DNA Elements) published, with much publicity, a series of about thirty papers last fall purporting to “identify all functional elements in the human genome sequence” (https://www.genome.gov/ENCODE/). Dan Graur, an evolutionary geneticist at the University of Houston, and his associates have published a paper in Genome Biology [...]