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Brown gaucho & Tangled Bank #63

Discover the importance of evolution in medicine and how it shapes our understanding of health and disease.

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Our old friend Brown Gaucho is hosting Tangled Bank #63. I enjoyed his post, The importance of evolution in medicine. BG is a primatologist-turned-med student, so he knows of what he speaks. But, I do have to take some issue with this contention:

Anatomically and genetically, humans haven't changed all that much in the past 100,000 years.

Yes, anatomically modern humans emerged over 100,000 years ago, but, that does not suffice to allow us to assume that genetically humans haven't changed "all that much." Of course, that depends on how you define "all that much," but a supercharged immune system forged in the fires of the Eurasian pathogen pool & lactose tolerance don't show up in the fossil record....

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