Part 1: Relevance of Evolution: Medicine

1. What is causing the evolutionary arms race with pathogens? Provide an example to illustrate your answer.

2. How can we slow down antibiotic resistance?

3. What is the evolutionary history of HIV? Why do some people live with HIV and not get sick?

4. How is the medical community controlling HIV’s resistance to drugs?

5. How is Huntington’s chorea passed down from one generation to the next? Explain in detail the process of inheritance.

6. Why does Huntington’s chorea persist in the population?

Part 2: How is Darwinian Medicine Useful?

1. What questions does Darwinian medicine seek to answer?

2. How did natural selection shape appetite regulation? How does this become maladaptive in today’s society where an abundance of food and lack of exercise are prevalent?

3. What role did anxiety play in ancient times and what mental diseases do we associate today as a possible result of the evolution of anxiety? How does our modern lifestyle contribute to higher levels of anxiety?

4. How are fever, cough, and other maladies useful as evolutionary defenses? Should we be prescribing medications to block these natural responses? What problems does our modern medication usage cause to the evolution of pathogens?

5. What is the link to reproductive success to our understanding of some maladaptive evolutionary designs of our genes and body that manifest later in life?

6. What role does natural selection play in adjusting virulence levels for pathogens?