Research in the News: Medical schools should enroll Darwin’s ideas, says professor

Doctors have a lot to learn from evolution, including why the immune system can go awry, the reasons some people cannot tolerate milk or alcohol, and how pathogens emerge to cause epidemics. 

In his review of the state of evolutionary medicine, Stephen Stearns, the Edward P. Bass Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, says that the day is coming when Darwin’s ideas will be inextricably linked to a doctor’s practice.

The piece was published Aug. 29 in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.