Why We Get Sick The New Science of Darwinian Medicine

by Nesse, Randolph M.; Williams, George C.

• ISBN13: 9780679746744
• ISBN10: 0679746749
• eBook ISBN(s): 9780307816009
• Additional ISBN(s): 9780812922240
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1996-01-30
• Publisher: Vintage
• More Book Details

Summary

The answers are in this groundbreaking book by two founders of the emerging science of Darwinian medicine, who deftly synthesize the latest research on disorders ranging from allergies to Alzheimer's and from cancer to Huntington's chorea. Why We Get Sick compels readers to reexamine the age-old attitudes toward sickness. Line drawings.

Author Biography

Randolph M Nesse, M.D., is a practicing physcian and professor and associate chair for education and academic affairs in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Michigan Medical School.

George C. Williams, Ph.D., is a professor emeritus of ecology and evolution at the State University at Stony Brook and editor of The Quarterly Review of Biology.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	v
Preface	ix
The Mystery of Disease	3	(10)
Evolution by Natural Selection	13	(13)
Signs and Symptoms of Infectious Disease	26	(23)
An Arms Race Without End	49	(17)
Injury	66	(11)
Toxins: New, Old, and Everywhere	77	(14)
Genes and Disease: Defects, Quirks, and Compromises	91	(16)
Aging as the Fountain of Youth	107	(16)
Legacies of Evolutionary History	123	(20)
Diseases of Civilization	143	(15)
Allergy	158	(13)
Cancer	171	(11)
Sex and Reproduction	182	(25)
Are Mental Disorders Disease?	207	(27)
The Evolution of Medicine	234	(17)
Notes	251	(22)
Index	273