Evolutionary Medicine: Rethinking the Origins of Disease

The reemergence of infectious bacterial diseases resistant to multiple antibiotics, the rise to epidemic levels of infectious diseases such as AIDS, and the increasing incidence of fatal diseases such as cancer and tuberculosis are indicative of a failure of modern medicine to understand the complex interaction of disease, human evolution, and modern therapeutics. Evolutionary Medicine: Rethinking the Origins of Disease is an exploration of the origins of the new patterns of such diseases and the forces that shape their evolution.
Marc Lappe provides a new perspective on illness and disease, one which presents diseases as evolutionary processes linked inextricably with environmental and ecological factors. Since all human illnesses have their roots in the forces that shaped evolution, it is critical to realize that human-made disruptions to the environment are now shaping the patterns of disease around the world as are the treatments that are being utilized to combat them.
Lappe argues that neglecting the evolutionary approaches to diseases has undermined the long-term success of modern medicine. Understanding the ways in which diseases have evolved, as well as what mechanisms have evolved to cope with them, is invaluable to those who are attempting to advise strategies for treatment.
By identifying a new perspective from which to view our present medical dilemmas, and by exploring the common roots of such events as the proliferation of HIV, the emergence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, and key autoimmune diseases, Marc Lappe has provided the basis for a new field, that of evolutionary medicine.

Marc Lappe is the director of CETOS, the Center for Ethics and Toxic Substances, in Gualala, California.