The Evolution & Medicine Review

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All good medicine is evidence based -- that is, diagnoses and treatments are developed via the scientific method. Oftentimes, evolutionary biology is employed to understand human health and diseases. This is known as evolutionary medicine.

Evolutionary medicine is a growing field that takes an interdisciplinary approach toward studying human disease. Tools from population ecology, molecular evolution, comparative anatomy, and many other fields are all integrated with clinical medicine to improve our understanding of human disease and develop new treatments. This approach can be applied to infectious diseases, congenital diseases, and acquired diseases.

Despite the rapid growth of this field, there is no central society or journal that deals with these topics. Additionally, because relevant research is often spread across otherwise disparate subdisciplines, people looking for literature on evolutionary medicine must search many different journals. To remedy this problem, a group of researchers working in evolutionary medicine have started an on-line review journal, or Web Based ReView (WeView), called The Evolution & Medicine Review. The creators view it as a sort-of cross between a blog and a review journal, although I'd categorize it as a single topic blog written by experts.

The Evolution & Medicine Review does not publish original research. Instead, the list of contributors produce short reviews on topics that interest them (very bloggy, not that it's a bad thing). You can read more about the EMR on their website.

(Via EvolDir.)

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