Question

1. How is evolution important to current/furture medical practive (for practitioner and patient, with examples)

2. Describe how evolutionary theory allows for a better knowledge about human behavior and how does this impact the understanding of various human behaviors that are diverse (with examples)

3. how does this have value to life. (with examples)

Answer 1

1. Evolution is the basis of life as we know on Earth, In today's world there is a rapid increase in the field of advanced medical research. With the advent of new diseases there are more new drugs to combat these new world pathogens. So as new antibiotics are raised against evolved pathogens, these pathogens also acquire adept mechanisms to flush out the drug from their system. So with every new family of drugs being used the bacteria or virus has new mechanisms to protect themselves from it, evolution is the main reason why this is possible. An example would be penicillin. It is no longer as powerful as it used to be when it was first discovered as the bacteria have modified their cellwall to evolve in such adverse conditions. So further tweaking of the basic structure of pencillin was necessary to try and kill bacteria again. So as doctors, it is necessary that they donot prescribe a variety of antibiotics for the same disease as it would lead to multidrug resistance in the individual and finally a time would arrive when no drug would work on him and he could suffer from a severe case of septic shock. Patients should also no take drugs without the advice of a doctor as it would again have the same consequences.

2, Animal behaviour is intimately related to evolution. Propagation of genes, survival of the fittest are the main causes of what we do and why we do it, the anima world has umpteen examples of such behaviour meant to select the best mate for propagation of genes. Like the elaborate tail of peacock even though its a heavy burden to carry around. The development of tool making skill by hominid group was due to their requirement to build houses and develop advanced tools to gather food. So evolution and human behaviour went had in hand. Even the cranial convolutions have increased from australopithecus to modern man which indicates we are capable of complex thought processing.

3. As more and more time passes evolution of brain will lead to better an newer technological applications. Man is an advanced mammal and hence has the power to alter its surroundings the most. So we have the responsibilty to look after our environment and put our brains to good use.