CARTA: Implications of Anthropogeny for Medicine and Health - Ajit Varki: Are There Human-Specific Diseases?

In this talk, Ajit Varki (UC San Diego) offers some surprising examples of common human diseases that appear to be either absent in our closest living evolutionary cousins (the so-called "great apes"), or manifest in a rather modified form. Given the close genetic similarity of all of these species, he contends that it is worth investigating these differences, with the goal of better understanding the pathological processes involved. Series: "CARTA - Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny" [Science] [Show ID: 31604]