What every physician should know about evolutionary biology

In Policy Forum of the American Institute for Biological Sciences:
Evolutionary biology in the medical curriculum ― what every physician should know
R. M. Nesse and G. C. Williams, 1997, BioScience 47(10): 664-666.

  1.  Tinbergen's four questions about an adaptive feature

• By what proximate mechanisms (anatomic and physiological) are the adaptive effects produced?

• What is the ontogeny of these mechanisms?

• What fitness advantages shaped and preserved the characteristics of this feature?

• What phylogenetic history led to the feature's present configuration?

  2.  Population genetics formulations of how natural selection works
  3.  Sexual selection and mate competition
  4.  Levels of selection: genes, genomes, individuals, groups
  5.  Kin selection
  6.  Segregation distortion
  7.  Adaptations and their analysis
  8.  The role of chance in evolution
  9.  Optimization and its limits
10.  Rates of evolutionary change
11.  Formulation and testing of evolutionary hypotheses
12.  The comparative method
13.  Evolutionary explanations for the vulnerabilities that lead to disease

• Infection: levels of virulence and host-pathogen arms races

• Novel factors in the environment: physical, social, etc.

• Cost-benefit tradeoffs at the level of traits: life history traits, including senesecence

• Cost-benefit tradeoffs at the level of the gene: heterozygote advantage and others

• Historical constraints: path dependence, the role of chance factors

• Defenses that are often mistaken for diseases: fever, cough, anxiety, etc.

14.  Hominid phylogeny  
15.  Sources of genetic variation within a species  
16.  Natural selection on mechanisms that regulate behavior  
17.  Reciprocity, social and familial relationships, and the problem of altruism  
18.  Implications for molecular biology

Current controversies, such as the adaptive significance of menstrual bleeding and morning sickness, the origin of HIV and its variation in virulence, and the out-of-Africa versus multiple regional origins of modern Homo sapiens.