Medicine in the 21st Century: towards a Darwinian Medical Epistemology

Abstract

In this review we reflect upon the new science of Darwinian medicine. It is a tenet of modern biology that evolutionary theory as proposed by Charles Darwin and further refined via the new synthesis is the common thread that ties all of biological inquiry into a coherent whole. This review aims at making clear how evolution by natural selection is relevant to medicine. A set of pertinent examples linking Homo sapiens sapiens' present disease conditions to its evolution during the Late Pleistocene and Holocene epochs are discussed. The review concludes with observations as to the epistemological value of evolutionary theory as a heuristic tool for articulating a medical paradigm in accord with modern biology.