Morris, Rick (2019) Be fruitful and multiply: Fitness and health in evolutionary mismatch and clinical research. [Preprint]
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Abstract
Evolutionary mismatch is, roughly, poor fit between an organism and its environment. Researchers in evolutionary medicine have proposed mismatch as a possible cause for morbidity and mortality in contemporary Homo sapiens
populations. Mismatch hypotheses are often taken to provide an evolutionary explanation for the health outcome in question, while simultaneously offering possible interventions for researchers and clinicians to pursue. A problem: fitness outcomes and health outcomes are distinct. Natural selection operates on fitness, not on health per se. There are cases where increased health may not contribute to fitness in the modern environment. I propose an approach for using evolutionary mismatch in clinical research which sidesteps this problem. The gist of the proposal: given structural analogies between environmental causes of morbidity and environmental causes of fitness reductions, evolutionary mismatch can be used as a heuristic to shrink the space through which clinical and public health researchers must search for possible interventions in response to contemporary health problems.
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| Item Type: | Preprint | ||||||
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| Subjects: | Specific Sciences > Biology Specific Sciences > Biology > Evolutionary Theory Specific Sciences > Medicine > Health and Disease Specific Sciences > Medicine General Issues > Philosophers of Science |
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| Depositing User: | Rick Morris | ||||||
| Date Deposited: | 12 Dec 2021 01:05 | ||||||
| Last Modified: | 12 Dec 2021 01:05 | ||||||
| Item ID: | 18777 | ||||||
| Subjects: | Specific Sciences > Biology Specific Sciences > Biology > Evolutionary Theory Specific Sciences > Medicine > Health and Disease Specific Sciences > Medicine General Issues > Philosophers of Science |
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| Date: | 13 June 2019 | ||||||
| URI: | https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/18777 |
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