By taking a course like this, medical students may or may not learn how to better cure medical problems like this. But they should be better able to explain the deep origins of disease to their patients and become better doctors in the end.

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Some diseases that afflict humans today, such as malaria, gout and cancer, are truly ancient and were handed down to us from our distant ancestors. By studying the distribution of these diseases in other living and fossil organisms, we can gain insights into the nature of these diseases.

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