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Evolutionary Medicine: A Graduate‐Level Seminar Course
Author(s) -
Schiffer Stephen Paul
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
the faseb journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.709
H-Index - 277
eISSN - 1530-6860
pISSN - 0892-6638
DOI - 10.1096/fasebj.22.1_supplement.574.10
Subject(s) - context (archaeology) , session (web analytics) , attendance , presentation (obstetrics) , evolutionary medicine , medical education , reading (process) , subject (documents) , psychology , medicine , mathematics education , library science , history , computer science , pathology , political science , surgery , archaeology , world wide web , law
Evolutionary medicine serves as an exciting intersection for the two disciplines of evolution and medicine. It provides for more than just a new perspective on the diseases of man and other animals. From an educational perspective, it makes the subject of evolution both interesting and relevant. With this in mind, a one‐credit graduate‐level seminar course was created at the Georgetown University School of Medicine. The course consisted of weekly sessions that were designed around hypothetical clinical cases prepared by the course director. The clinical cases covered a range of human health problems and while most were written with a current‐day context, a couple cases had an historic context and the final case had a futuristic one. Each student was randomly assigned a case and seminar date during which s/he served as the “Darwinian Doctor of the Day” (DDD). Each session began with the DDD reading the clinical case followed by a roundtable discussion of its evolutionary insights. The DDD then led a detailed presentation on the proximate cause of the disease as well as the evolutionary milestones that helped explain why the disease occurs in humans at all. Each session finished with the DDD handing out an Insight Article (IA) chosen from the scientific or clinical literature that was relevant to the case. The course director then posted a question based on the IA on the course's Blackboard Discussion site and to which each student was required to respond by the next session. The students were graded based upon attendance, participation, their DDD presentation, their timely IA responses, and a mandatory term paper. Student feedback at the end of the course was overwhelmingly supportive indicating that it provided a fascinating perspective on human health and disease.