In April 2016, The European Human Behaviour and Evolution Association (EHBEA) Conference was hosted at the London School of Hygeine and Tropical Medicine. CEM Director, Randy Nesse served on a panel that was co-organized with the London Evolutionary Research Network generously hosted at and by the Linnean Society. The panel composed of leading thinkers on Evolutionary Medicine, including Gillian Bentley (Durham University), Daniel Nettle (Newcastle University) and Mervyn Singer (University College London).

 

More than 150 years has passed since the publication of On the Origin of Species. Nevertheless, only recently has Darwin’s dangerous idea started to be applied to understand and explain human health. Scholars in the emerging field of Evolutionary Medicine suggest that evolutionary thinking will transform our thinking about disease – from bringing clarity to psychiatrists’ categories of emotional disorders to helping us understand why modern environments cause diseases. But the field is young. Will evolutionary medicine fundamentally change our understanding of disease, or will it simply be an additional tool in our toolkit? Which neglected areas will benefit most from adding an evolutionary perspective? And what is needed to get funding agencies to support more research projects in Evolutionary Medicine in the first place? Read more about EHBEA and EHBEA 2016