On Thursday, 26 March 2026, the sixth popular science event within the 14th cycle of Open Thursday was held as part of FUZ&JA, the science popularisation project of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Osijek. The lecture, entitled Evolutionary Medicine: 3.5 Billion Years in the Service of Health (and Disease), was given by Asst. Prof. Momir Futo, PhD, from the Faculty of Medicine at the Catholic University of Croatia in Zagreb. At the centre of the lecture was a fundamental question of evolutionary medicine: why does a particular disease exist at all?
Unlike modern medicine, which treats and prevents the development of disease, evolutionary medicine seeks to explain where diseases come from, or why some diseases exist at all. In this sense, our bodies are the result of a long series of evolutionary compromises and adaptations to the conditions of life on Earth. If we consider the history of human development as a species, nature has primarily been concerned with whether we survive long enough to reproduce and thus ensure the survival of the species. One such example concerns childbirth and early childhood development. When our ancestors began walking on two legs, the human pelvis gradually became narrower. At the same time, the human brain, and therefore the head of a newborn child, became larger. This mismatch between the size of the mother’s birth canal and the child’s head makes human childbirth more difficult and dangerous than in other animals. As a kind of solution, human children are born developmentally “unfinished”, unlike an antelope that can run only a few hours after birth, and are therefore completely dependent on their parents for several years. Yet it is precisely this long childhood, during which the brain grows intensively, that enabled the development of the abilities that distinguish humans from other living species.
The lecture also addressed the history of human development as a species – from the earliest human ancestors to Homo sapiens in the 21st century – with particular emphasis on human migration across the world. These migrations also had medical consequences: different populations developed specific genetic traits, meaning that different peoples, and even cultures, can respond very differently to certain medicines. The speaker also explained several evolutionarily interesting “solutions”. For example, sickle cell anaemia, which causes serious health problems, also provides protection against malaria. Therefore, in areas where malaria is common, sickle cell anaemia remains present in the population because it offers a certain health advantage. In addition, it turns out that we inherited certain genes from Neanderthals, a species that became extinct long ago, which still influence how our immune system responds to diseases today, including coronavirus. The part of the lecture dealing with antibiotics and their excessive use attracted particular attention from the audience. The speaker pointed out that antibiotics are overused not only in medicine, for example when doctors prescribe them for viral infections as well (for which they are ineffective), but also in livestock farming with the aim of accelerating animal growth. All of this contributes to bacterial resistance to antibiotics, which could seriously endanger one of the most important medical achievements in history in the future. Finally, the speaker turned to the human microbiota, the community of microorganisms that live in and on our bodies. These tiny inhabitants of the human body participate in digestion, help build the immune system and protect us from harmful bacteria. Disruptions to the microbiota may be associated with allergies and metabolic problems, but may also contribute to the development of cancer, various diseases of the nervous system and mental health disorders such as depression.
The lecture also raised several questions that were new to the audience, such as why human females are the only females in the living world to go through menopause. As became clear, evolutionary medicine does not always provide ready-made answers, but it does encourage us to think about health and disease from a diachronic perspective.
Mia Filipov, PhD, Assistant,
Co-Host of Open Thursday