ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2010
Evolution in health and medicine Sackler colloquium: Making evolutionary biology a basic science for medicine.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2010. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 80 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
80 citing papers in PubMed, 222 citations in OpenAlex.
- Retuning the Premedical Compass in American Programs Worldwide: Scoping Review.JMIR medical education · 2026Article
- Oligonucleotide Selective Detection by Levitated Optomechanics.ACS nanoscience Au · 2026Article
- From natural theology to the extended synthesis: Historical milestones and conceptual expansions in evolutionary biology.Genetics and molecular biology · 2026Article
- Evolutionary medicine and psychiatry in medical education: a scoping review.Evolution, medicine, and public health · 2026Article
- Explanations for failures in designed and evolved systems.PNAS nexus · 2025Article
- Relation Between Obesity and Type 2 Diabetes: Evolutionary Insights, Perspectives and Controversies.Current obesity reports · 2024Review
- Early life adversities and lifelong health outcomes: A review of the literature on large, social, long-lived nonhuman mammals.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2023Review
- Evolutionary psychiatry: foundations, progress and challenges.World psychiatry : official journal of the World Psychiatric Association (WPA) · 2023Article
- Antimicrobial Resistance in the Global Health Network: Known Unknowns and Challenges for Efficient Responses in the 21st Century.Microorganisms · 2023Review
- Long-Term Transcriptomic Changes and Cardiomyocyte Hyperpolyploidy after Lactose Intolerance in Neonatal Rats.International journal of molecular sciences · 2023Article
- Explanatory integration and integrated explanations in Darwinian medicine and evolutionary medicine.Theoretical medicine and bioethics · 2023Article
- The EvMed Assessment: A test for measuring student understanding of core concepts in evolutionary medicine.Evolution, medicine, and public health · 2023Article
- Evaluating the dissemination of evolutionary biology concepts in medicine.Brazilian journal of medical and biological research = Revista brasileira de pesquisas medicas e biologica · 2023Article
- The value of broad taxonomic comparisons in evolutionary medicine: Disease is not a trait but aMedComm · 2022Article
- Review
- Prevention and Control Strategies for Non-Communicable Disease: Goldberger, Pellagra and Rose Revisited.Epidemiologia (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Review
- The Contribution of Evolutionary Game Theory to Understanding and Treating Cancer.Dynamic games and applications · 2022Review
- Innovations are disproportionately likely in the periphery of a scientific network.Theory in biosciences = Theorie in den Biowissenschaften · 2021Article
- Clan genomics: From OMIM phenotypic traits to genes and biology.American journal of medical genetics. Part A · 2021Article
- Identifying adaptive alleles in the human genome: from selection mapping to functional validation.Human genetics · 2021Review
20 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
13 authors at 11 institutions in 4 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
New applications of evolutionary biology in medicine are being discovered at an accelerating rate, but few physicians have sufficient educational background to use them fully. This article summarizes suggestions from several groups that have considered how evolutionary biology can be useful in medicine, what physicians should learn about it, and when and how they should learn it. Our general conclusion is that evolutionary biology is a crucial basic science for medicine. In addition to looking at established evolutionary methods and topics, such as population genetics and pathogen evolution, we highlight questions about why natural selection leaves bodies vulnerable to disease. Knowledge about evolution provides physicians with an integrative framework that links otherwise disparate bits of knowledge. It replaces the prevalent view of bodies as machines with a biological view of bodies shaped by evolutionary processes. Like other basic sciences, evolutionary biology needs to be taught both before and during medical school. Most introductory biology courses are insufficient to establish competency in evolutionary biology. Premedical students need evolution courses, possibly ones that emphasize medically relevant aspects. In medical school, evolutionary biology should be taught as one of the basic medical sciences. This will require a course that reviews basic principles and specific medical applications, followed by an integrated presentation of evolutionary aspects that apply to each disease and organ system. Evolutionary biology is not just another topic vying for inclusion in the curriculum; it is an essential foundation for a biological understanding of health and disease.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.