Evolutionary Thinking

Evolution, in its most simple sense, is described as change over time. I believe it’s important that we understand how evolutionary thinking is relevant to understanding disease as an agent of natural selection because evolutionary thinking taps into two important fields: biology and medicine. It helps us understand the field of biology because evolution helps explain life; specifically differences, changes and developments to adapt. On the other hand, it helps us understand the field of medicine as it will allow researchers and scientists to conduct experiments to come up with new therapies, drugs or treatments to tackle diseases. By excluding evolution into the conversation, it deprives us from understanding fundamental concept of what
For example, patients with different cultural backgrounds express differently in regards to seeking for help. In addition, interaction with health care providers varies differently across culture. Overall, what’s considered respectful in one culture, may not be considered respectful in another. This puts complications in diagnosing what patients really need. It’s already difficult to separate what’s gold from garbage in regards to the therapies used to treat illness, hence it puts unnecessary challenges and worries in giving the best possible health care to patients. On the other hand, culture has allowed us a community to develop a successful adaptive mechanism. It is the core reason why we have a significant advantage for survival in comparison with other life
We are not genetically built to adapt to extreme changes to our surroundings, hence to compensate our lack of skills to keep up and adapt to our settings, we form maladaptive cultural behaviors. In addition, we are prone to discuss only what works for us and we tend to be persistent and arrogant towards our understanding and belief of what is suitable for us. This creates a biased perception towards treatments that “work” on patients.

Jared Diamond challenges that humanity’s biggest and worst mistake was making that transition from hunting-gathering lifestyle to agricultural lifestyle. Diamond discusses reasoning varied from gender and race inequalities to the decisions our ancestors had to make between controlling population numbers and providing more food for a growing population. By taking his readers a closer look at the entire picture of human picture, he admits the benefits of the agricultural lifestyle our ancestors approached, but challenges his statement by bringing up complications and problems that came with this transition. It’s necessary that the analysis of the history of human human health is biocultural, because it allows us to explore two different fields (biology and culture) together, and how each of the respective fields have shaped each other throughout the