Body by Darwin: How Evolution Shapes Our Health and Transforms Medicine PDF
Preview Body by Darwin: How Evolution Shapes Our Health and Transforms Medicine
BODY BY DARWIN B O D Y B Y D A R W I N How Evolution Shapes Our Health and Transforms Medicine JEREMY TAYLOR THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS Chicago and London Jeremy Taylor was previously a senior producer and director for BBC Television, and he has made numerous science flms for the Discovery Channel and the Learning Channel, among others. He is also the author of Not a Chimp: The Hunt to Find the Genes That Make Us Human. He lives in London. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637 The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London © 2015 by Jeremy Taylor All rights reserved. Published 2015. Printed in the United States of America 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 1 2 3 4 5 ISBN-1 3: 978-0 -2 26-0 5988-4 (cloth) ISBN-1 3: 978-0 -2 26-0 5991-4 (e- book) DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226059914.001.0001 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Taylor, Jeremy, 1946– author. Body by Darwin: how evolution shapes our health and transforms medicine / Jeremy Taylor. pages; cm Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-0-226-05988-4 (cloth: alk. paper)— ISBN 978-0-226-05991-4 (e-book) 1. Evolution (Biology) 2. Human evolution. 3. Evolutionary genetics. I. Title. qh366.2.t374 2015 576.8—dc23 2015019942 ♾ This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1 992 (Permanence of Paper). For Linus and Barbara CONTENTS Introduction 1 ABSENT FRIENDS How the Hygiene Hypothesis Explains Allergies and Autoimmune Diseases 13 A FINE ROMANCE How Evolutionary Theory Explains Infertility and Diseases of Pregnancy 49 THE DOWNSIDE OF UPRIGHT The Relationship between Bipedalism and Orthopedic Illnesses 81 DIY EYE How Developmental Biology Cures Blindness and Rebuts Creationism 113 HOPEFUL MONSTERS Why Cancer Is Almost Impossible to Cure 141 A PROBLEM WITH THE PLUMBING Why the Evolution of Coronary Arteries Makes Us Prone to Heart Attacks 175 THREE SCORE YEARS—AND THEN? How Evolution Is Breathing New Life into Moribund Dementia Research 207 Acknowledgments 245 Suggestions for Further Reading 247 INTRODUCTION Why can’t we live forever? Why can’t we make human dis- ease a thing of the past? Why is it taking such a long time to cure cancer? These are the sorts of questions that schoolkids often pose to popular science blogers, student forums, and the “Ask a Scientist” columns of daily newspapers, but they are no less interesting for that. Yet human life expectancy is increasing rapidly in countries worldwide and in some now exceeds eighty years. A recent study shows that the diference today in the decrease in human mortality between hunter- gathers and modern Western-l ifestyle populations is greater than that between hunter-g atherers and wild chimpanzees. The bulk of this mortality reduction has occurred in just the last four generations of the roughly eight thousand genera- tions of humans that have ever lived. You only have to look at the incredible advances over the last century in surgery, phar- macology, public health, immunology, and transplantation to see what a success story modern medicine has been. But sweeping statistics like this disguise a perplexing and worrying amount of disease, the incidence of which is get- ting worse not better. The pattern of human illness, the sick- ness landscape, is forever changing. To the deceptively naive schoolkid questions above, we can easily add: Why do so many of us sufer from autoimmune diseases such as rheuma- toid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, type 1 diabetes, and infam- matory bowel disease? Why are so many people doged by 1
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