More than 200 people attended an interdisciplinary symposium on “Evolutionary Medicine: Interdisciplinary Contributions to the Study of Disease and Immunity” Feb. 25-26 at the Florida State University College of Medicine and the Department of Biological Science.

Participants traveled from around the country to hear the experts, who included keynote speaker Randolph Nesse from the University of Michigan.

Evolutionary medicine is a growing discipline that applies evolutionary reasoning to medical problems, including the nature of disease and the efficacy of immune response. Speakers included physicians, evolutionary biologists, and historians and philosophers of science.

The event was sponsored by the College of Medicine, the William H. and Lucyle T. Werkmeister Endowment Fund, and the Frank and Yolande Fowler Endowment in Modern Molecular Biology.

“It was wonderful to have so many people who are doing interesting and important work attend," said one of the organizers, Joseph Gabriel, assistant professor in the College of Medicine's Department of Medical Humanities and Social Sciences. "Evolutionary medicine is at the cutting edge of how we think about health and disease, and the symposium provided a great window on the state of the field. I think everyone involved learned a tremendous amount.”

There was one disappointment: An earthquake halfway around the world prevented one keynote speaker, Sir Peter Gluckman of New Zealand, from being able to attend.

Schedule

Friday, Feb. 25
FSU College of Medicine Auditorium, Tallahassee
8:30 Dean John Fogarty, FSU College of Medicine
8:40 Paul Ewald, University of Louisville. "Evolutionary Insights into the Causes and Prevention of Cancer"
9:30 Michael Worobey, University of Arizona. "The Tree of Death: Understanding and Exploiting the Evolutionary Dynamics of Human Pathogens"
10:15 Coffee break
10:45 Jacob Koella, Imperial College London. "Evolutionary Epidemiology of Malaria and Mosquitoes"
11:30 Keynote Address: Randolph Nesse, University of Michigan. "Medicine Without Evolution is Like Engineering Without Physics"
12:35 Lunch at nearby restaurants
2:00 Kathleen Barnes, Johns Hopkins Center for Global Health. "The Hygiene Hypothesis and Vulnerability to Asthma"
2:45 Howard Kushner, Rollins School of Public Health, Emory. "Is There a Selective Advantage for Left-Handedness?"
3:30 Coffee break
4:00 Mark Schwartz "Teaching Evolution to Accelerate Translation in Medicine"
4:45 Reception, College of Medicine atrium

Saturday, Feb. 26
Department of Biological Science, 1024 King Life Sciences Building
9:30 Welcome from Bryant Chase, Chair of the Department of Biological Science
9:35 David Houle, FSU Department of Biology. "Phenomics: A Shared Challenge for Medicine and Evolutionary Biology"
10:20 William Aird, Harvard Medical School. "Proximate and Evolutionary Mechanisms in Endothelial Biomedicine"
11:05 Coffee break
11:30 Keynote Address: (The scheduled speaker had been Sir Peter Gluckman, University of Auckland. "The Primary Principles of Evolutionary Medicine: How an Evolutionary Perspective Adds to Medicine and Public Health")

12:35 Lunch at nearby restaurants
2:00 Richard Nowakowski, FSU College of Medicine. "Development Algorithms and the Evolution of the Cerebral Cortex"
2:45 Fabio Zampieri, University of Padua. "Before the Dawn of Evolutionary Medicine: Darwinism and Medical Sciences Between 1880 and 1940"
3:30 Coffee break
4:00 Michael Ruse, FSU Department of Philosophy. "Should Sick Philosophers Turn to Evolutionary Medicine for Help?"
4:45 Discussion
5:15 Break
7:00 Dinner at the home of Lizzie and Michael Ruse. All participants are welcome, including partners and children.