National Academies Press: OpenBook

In the Light of Evolution: Volume V: Cooperation and Conflict (2011)

Chapter: Part IV: SOCIALITY AND MEDICINE

« Previous: 10 Selfish Genetic Elements, Genetic Conflict, and Evolutionary Innovation--JOHN H. WERREN
Suggested Citation:"Part IV: SOCIALITY AND MEDICINE." National Academy of Sciences. 2011. In the Light of Evolution: Volume V: Cooperation and Conflict. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13223.
×

Part IV

image

SOCIALITY AND MEDICINE

Most biologists probably work in biomedical fields. If nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution, then medicine should have much to learn from evolutionary reasoning. The rapidly growing field of Darwinian medicine (Williams and Neese, 1991) is based on this premise and seeks to provide insight on topics such as the evolution of virulence and diseases of altered evolutionary environments. A subfield recently called Hamiltonian medicine (Foster, 2005) investigates the impact of social evolution, cooperation, and conflict on disease.

In Chapter 11, Andrew Read and colleagues treat the vital problem of how to minimize the evolution of pathogen resistance and thereby extend the useful lives of our arsenal of antibiotic drugs. This involves a complex set of interacting causes, some of which have a social element and others do not. The authors challenge the dogma that we minimize the evolution of resistance by “radical pathogen cure”: using enough of a drug to try to eliminate the pathogen from the patient’s body. The reasonable rationale behind this practice is to lower the pathogen population size and minimize the occurrence of novel resistance mutations. But the authors argue that this ignores the selective phase, which may be more important in determining the time to drug impotence, particularly when resistance mutations arise with relative ease. In this selective phase, the radical pathogen cure provides the strongest possible selection for resistance. According to Read and colleagues, the social structure of the pathogen can powerfully augment this selection. When a host is infected by multiple strains

Suggested Citation:"Part IV: SOCIALITY AND MEDICINE." National Academy of Sciences. 2011. In the Light of Evolution: Volume V: Cooperation and Conflict. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13223.
×

of the pathogen (as is often true of malaria) and the total density of the pathogen is regulated, then wiping out susceptible strains with antibiotics can greatly increase the frequency of formerly rare resistant strains. This raises the possibility that the medical community is ignoring an important human social dilemma: that the best treatment for a patient may not be the best outcome for society as a whole.

Some human disorders can spring not from a failure of adaptation per se, but from disagreement and conflict over what is the correct adaptation. This is particularly so in the realm of human interpersonal relations, starting with fundamental conflicts between parent and offspring. Haig (1993) has argued that such conflicts can lead to pathologies in pregnancy when there is an upset in the precarious resolution of embryo-maternal conflict. Taking a radical step further, he has pointed out that the optimal strategy of an embryo’s gene differs according to whether it came from the dam or the sire, with maternal loci being less selected to take resources from the mother. Remarkably, imprinted genes appear to behave in accord with this theory. In Chapter 12, David Haig extends this thinking in several directions. He notes that most of our kin belong to categories that have asymmetrical relatedness to our maternal and paternal genes, so that most of our psychological adaptations for dealing with kin, and perhaps pathologies, may reflect these kinds of conflicts. In particular, he shows how this perspective may illuminate unsolved problems surrounding the evolution of adolescence and the timing of sexual maturation in humans.

In Chapter 13, Steven Frank and Bernard Crespi extend and generalize the same theme: that conflict can lead to pathologies when opposing interests that are precariously balanced become unbalanced. These authors suggest that the conflict between maternal and paternal genes in offspring, through its demonstrated effects on the regulation and pathologies of growth, may be responsible for some cancers. They then discuss the exciting idea that this same balance is partly responsible for a wide spectrum of psychiatric disorders, such as autism that may result from an overexpression of paternal interests in offspring selfishness. Similarly, other disorders such as schizophrenia might result from an overexpression of genes underlying the maternal goal of greater social integration. Finally, the authors present a novel theory of conflict between autosomal and X chromosomes. The latter spend two-thirds of their time in females and therefore should be selected to give greater weight to female than to male adaptation. Autosomes should give equal weight. It will be fascinating to see if empirical tests support the authors’ prediction that such conflict will underlie pathologies of expression along the male-female axis.

Suggested Citation:"Part IV: SOCIALITY AND MEDICINE." National Academy of Sciences. 2011. In the Light of Evolution: Volume V: Cooperation and Conflict. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13223.
×
Page 235
Suggested Citation:"Part IV: SOCIALITY AND MEDICINE." National Academy of Sciences. 2011. In the Light of Evolution: Volume V: Cooperation and Conflict. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13223.
×
Page 236
Next: 11 The Evolution of Drug Resistance and the Curious Orthodoxy of Aggressive Chemotherapy--ANDREW F. READ, TROY DAY, and SILVIE HUIJBEN »
In the Light of Evolution: Volume V: Cooperation and Conflict Get This Book
×
Buy Hardback | $90.00 Buy Ebook | $69.99
MyNAP members save 10% online.
Login or Register to save!
Download Free PDF

Biodiversity--the genetic variety of life--is an exuberant product of the evolutionary past, a vast human-supportive resource (aesthetic, intellectual, and material) of the present, and a rich legacy to cherish and preserve for the future. Two urgent challenges, and opportunities, for 21st-century science are to gain deeper insights into the evolutionary processes that foster biotic diversity, and to translate that understanding into workable solutions for the regional and global crises that biodiversity currently faces. A grasp of evolutionary principles and processes is important in other societal arenas as well, such as education, medicine, sociology, and other applied fields including agriculture, pharmacology, and biotechnology. The ramifications of evolutionary thought also extend into learned realms traditionally reserved for philosophy and religion.

The central goal of the In the Light of Evolution (ILE) series is to promote the evolutionary sciences through state-of-the-art colloquia--in the series of Arthur M. Sackler colloquia sponsored by the National Academy of Sciences--and their published proceedings. Each installment explores evolutionary perspectives on a particular biological topic that is scientifically intriguing but also has special relevance to contemporary societal issues or challenges. This book is the outgrowth of the Arthur M. Sackler Colloquium "Cooperation and Conflict," which was sponsored by the National Academy of Sciences on January 7-8, 2011, at the Academy's Arnold and Mabel Beckman Center in Irvine, California. It is the fifth in a series of colloquia under the general title "In the Light of Evolution." The current volume explores recent developments in the study of cooperation and conflict, ranging from the level of the gene to societies and symbioses.

Humans can be vicious, but paradoxically we are also among nature's great cooperators. Even our great conflicts-wars-are extremely cooperative endeavors on each side. Some of this cooperation is best understood culturally, but we are also products of evolution, with bodies, brains, and behaviors molded by natural selection. How cooperation evolves has been one of the big questions in evolutionary biology, and how it pays or does not pay is a great intellectual puzzle. The puzzle of cooperation was the dominant theme of research in the early years of Darwin's research, whereas recent work has emphasized its importance and ubiquity. Far from being a rare trait shown by social insects and a few others, cooperation is both widespread taxonomically and essential to life. The depth of research on cooperation and conflict has increased greatly, most notably in the direction of small organisms.

Although most of In the Light of Evolution V: Cooperation and Conflict is about the new topics that are being treated as part of social evolution, such as genes, microbes, and medicine, the old fundamental subjects still matter and remain the object of vigorous research. The first four chapters revisit some of these standard arenas, including social insects, cooperatively breeding birds, mutualisms, and how to model social evolution.

  1. ×

    Welcome to OpenBook!

    You're looking at OpenBook, NAP.edu's online reading room since 1999. Based on feedback from you, our users, we've made some improvements that make it easier than ever to read thousands of publications on our website.

    Do you want to take a quick tour of the OpenBook's features?

    No Thanks Take a Tour »
  2. ×

    Show this book's table of contents, where you can jump to any chapter by name.

    « Back Next »
  3. ×

    ...or use these buttons to go back to the previous chapter or skip to the next one.

    « Back Next »
  4. ×

    Jump up to the previous page or down to the next one. Also, you can type in a page number and press Enter to go directly to that page in the book.

    « Back Next »
  5. ×

    Switch between the Original Pages, where you can read the report as it appeared in print, and Text Pages for the web version, where you can highlight and search the text.

    « Back Next »
  6. ×

    To search the entire text of this book, type in your search term here and press Enter.

    « Back Next »
  7. ×

    Share a link to this book page on your preferred social network or via email.

    « Back Next »
  8. ×

    View our suggested citation for this chapter.

    « Back Next »
  9. ×

    Ready to take your reading offline? Click here to buy this book in print or download it as a free PDF, if available.

    « Back Next »
Stay Connected!