Ashdin Publishing Journal of Evolutionary Medicine ASHDIN Vol. 3 (2015), Article ID 235924, 45 pages publishing doi:10.4303/jem/235924 Abstracts CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS Abstracts for the “Evolutionary Medicine Conference: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Human Health and Disease” at the University of Zurich, Switzerland (July 30–August 1, 2015) Kaspar Staub,1 Nicole Bender,2 Paul Ewald,3 and Frank Ruhli¨ 1 1Institute of Evolutionary Medicine, University of Zurich, Winterthurerstrasse 190, CH-8057 Zurich, Switzerland 2Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine, University of Bern, Finkenhubelweg 11, CH-3012 Bern, Switzerland 3Department of Biology, University of Louisville, Louisville, KY 40292, USA Address correspondence to Frank Ruhli,¨
[email protected] Received 17 Aril 2015; Revised 11 May 2015; Accepted 14 May 2015 Copyright © 2015 Kaspar Staub et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Summary In summer 2015, the “Evolutionary Medicine Conference diseases. The discipline is now at a turning point at which a 2015: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Human Health and Disease” rigorous application of evolutionary insights to the medical takes place at the Institute of Evolutionary Medicine, University of sciences will require not only assessing the validity of the Zurich, Switzerland. This international conference is the first of its kind in Europe and brings together eight distinguished keynote speak- full spectrum of possible explanations for each disease ers from all over the world as well as experts from different disci- but the interplay of different contributors to illness within plines (including medicine, anthropology, molecular/evolutionary biol- and between the three broad categories of causal factors: ogy, paleopathology, archeology, history, psychology, epidemiology, genetic, infectious, and environmental.