Useful Texts

This page contains links to a number of introductory texts, mainly from the early days of Darwinian medicine, that the general reader, or the reader new to the idea of evolutionary medicine, will find useful.

• What is Darwinian Medicine?

• Sickness can be good for you

Reviews of Nesse and Williams' "Evolution and Healing" (in UK) - "Why We Get Sick" (in US):

• • Margaret Henderson's review

  • Sharon Kingsland's review

  • Lori Oliwenstein's review - Dr Darwin

• Hidden Benefits

• Is nausea in pregnancy Nature's way of protecting the fetus from toxins?

• Profile: Margie Profet. (See also ...)

External links to other useful texts:

• Evolutionary Medicine in The Annual Review of Anthropology (2007) by Wenda R. Trevathan

• Darwin in Medical School by Mitzi Baker

(Stanford Medicine Magazine - Stanford Univ. Sch. Med.)

• A New Prescription: The Evolution of Darwinian Medicine by Ilanit Tof

• Darwinian Medicine by Timothy Shanahan

The following are some useful texts that have come into my possession, but I cannot find their source. If you know from whence they originate, please let me know by email so that I can give the authors full recognition.

• Darwinian (Evolutionary) Medicine – Editorial by J. Graham Smith

• Dr Darwin's Rx by Beth Saulnier

• The New Science of Darwinian Medicine (Student Essay) by Tang Pui Ling

The following is a selection of articles, in reverse chronological order, by Randolph Nesse. This selection deals with topics of a more somatic, rather than psychiatric, nature. A more extensive list of Nesse's work – including his work dealing evolutionary medicine in relation to psychiatric conditions – can be found on his website [See]:

• Nesse, R.M. (2012). Evolution: A basic science for medicine. In: Poiani A., (ed.) Pragmatic Evolution: Applications of Evolutionary Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp107-14.

• Nesse, R.M. (2008). Evolution: medicine's most basic science. Lancet, 372: S21-27.

• Stearns, S., Nesse, R., & Haig, D. (2008) Introducing evolutionary thinking for medicine. Evolution in Health and Disease. New York: Oxford University Press. pp3–15.

• Nesse R.M., & Stearns, S.C. (2008). The Great Opportunity: Evolutionary Applications in Medicine. Evolutionary Applications, 1 (1): 28-48.

• Nesse, R.M., Stearns, S.C., & Omenn, G.S. (2006). Medicine needs evolution (editorial). Science 311:1071.

• Nesse, R.M., & Schiffman, J.D. (2003) Evolutionary Biology in the Medical School Curriculum. BioScience 53 (6): 585-587.

• Nesse, R.M. (2001) Medicine's missing basic science. The New Physician, Dec. 2001: 8-10.

• Nesse, R.M. (2001) How is Darwinian medicine useful? Western Medical Journal, 174: 358-359.

• Nesse, R.M. (2001) On the difficulty of defining disease: A Darwinian perspective. Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy, 4:37-46.

• Nesse, R.M., & Williams, G.C. (1999) On Darwinian medicine. Life Science Research 3 (1): 1-17.

• Nesse, R.M., & Williams, G.C. (1998) Evolution and the Origins of Disease. Scientific American, 29 (5): 86-93.

• Nesse, R.M. & Williams, G.C. (1997) Evolutionary biology in the medical curriculum: What every physician should know. Bioscience 47: 664-666.

• Williams, G.C., & Nesse, R.M. (1991) The dawn of Darwinian medicine. The Quarterly Review of Biology, 66:1-22.

The following are some useful published articles for which there is limited online access:

• McCrone, J. (2003). Darwinian Medicine. The Lancet - Neurology, 2(August), 516.

• Olshansky, S., Carnes, B., & Butler, R. (2001). If Humans Were Built To Last. Scientific American, 284(3), 42-47.

• A news article about the above, at sciencedaily.com.