Human illnesses can be understood as damage to those adaptations that we took on at various stages in our evolution from pre-life molecules to modern Homo sapiens. Preventing these illnesses entails avoiding what causes the damage– which too frequently are the everyday hazards of twenty-first-century life, as the chart below shows: Level of Evolution Cause of adaptive failure resulting disease or problem Pre-life Environmental poisons Certain birth defects Single cell (bacteria and amoeba-like)...
