Question

What is evolutionary public health? Are there advantages to an evolutionary perspective for addressing global health challenges? What are the potential downsides or drawbacks of integrating evolutionary theory and global health? What should evolutionary public health advocates do to overcome those downsides/drawbacks?

Answer 1

Ans . Evolutionary public health :- It is the application of modern evolutionary theory to understanding health and disease.It focuses on the question of why evolution has shaped the mechanisms in ways that may leave us susceptible to disease.

The evolutionary approach has driven important advances in our understanding of cancer, auto immune disease etc.It is a holistic framework to consider the physical and behavioural decisions individuals make in light of energy allocation and maximising reproductive success

. It also considers the perspective of evolution in human reproduction as well as interaction between human behaviour and microbes that shapes our physiology and metabolism.

Knowing the evolutionary relationships among species allows scientists to choose appropriate organisms for the study of dieases, such as HIV. Scientists are even using the principles of natural selection to identify new drugs for detecting and treating diseases such as cancer.

It enables us to ask informed questions and develop novel responses to global health problems.

The evolutionary medical approach is useful for explaining not the pathogenesis (cause and mechanism) , but the ultimate reason why the disease occurs in humans. Evolutionary medicine is not directly useful in the diagnosis and treatment of disease.

An evolutionary approach can fundamentally change how we think about the body and disease. Instead of seeing a disease as a defect in a previously perfect medicine, Evolutionary medicine allows us to see the body as a product of natural selection, full of trade-offs and vulnerabilities that all too often lead to disease.