Do Medical Schools Need To Teach More Evolution?

The presumptions of evolutionary biology do not need to be taught to pre-medical and medical students as if they are factual. Future clinicians do well to discern that what can be tested and observed is qualitatively distinct from evolutionary mythology. Erroneous beliefs that certain mysterious “vestigial organs” were useless evolutionary leftovers, for instance, led many physicians to destroy them needlessly. Countless appendixes were removed unnecessarily on the Darwinian assumption that they were useless leftovers from our ape-ish heritage, ignoring clear evidence that the appendix functions as part of the immune system. Likewise, the thymus glands of many children were needlessly irradiated by physicians who thought the thymus—an important component of a child’s developing immune system—was a useless evolutionary vestige.