Please help Darwin's medical students URGENTLY! #2

This week for the second time (see earlier posting) I have been supervising a student-selected activity entitled "The Darwins, Evolution and Medicine". The rationale for these SSAs is to stimulate curiosity and critical thinking among medical students, who are otherwise burdened with a great deal of rote learning. There are fourteen students on the course and I offered them a selection of topics, which ranged from the matter-of-fact to the highly controversial. Here are the topics they chose:

• The illness of Charles Darwin: a retrospective diagnosis
  
• Charles and Emma- Benefits and Hazards of First Cousin Marriages
  
• The Pleistocene diet: a recipe for diet and health?
  
• Why do Europeans, North Asians and Native American have pale skins
  
• How can we explain the course of the recurrent laryngeal nerve
  
• Tay-Sachs disease in Ashkenazi Jews: Origins and Prevention
  
• Darwin and slavery
  

The students have been given the option of delivering a conventional powerpoint presentation tomorrow morning or posting on a purpose-built blog Darwin's students, by 7 pm tonight. I offered this latter option as an incentive for them to explore and evaluate the blogosphere as a tool for academic research. 

Please feel free to look at what they have written and provide constructive comments on their postings, links to other postings or literature etc etc just as if they were regular bloggers! As I explained to them, in a real sense, blogging is more peer-reviewed than the regular scientific literature, as dozens or even hundreds of people can comment. BUT be gentle with them—this is their first foray into the blogosphere!

Please help Darwin's medical students URGENTLY!

This week for the first time I have been supervising a student-selected activity entitled "The Darwins, Evolution and Medicine". The rationale for these SSAs is to stimulate curiosity and critical thinking among medical students, who are otherwise burdened with a great deal of rote learning. There are seven students on the course and I offered them a selection of topics, which ranged from the matter-of-fact to the highly controversial. Here are the topics they chose:

• Erasmus Darwin: Physician or Poet or both?
  
• The Evolution of Lactose Tolerance
  
• Should being a creationist automatically disqualify applicants for admission to medical school?
  
• HeLa Cells: ethical nightmare, medical blessing, or evolution of a post-human species?
  
• What killed Annie Darwin?
  
• Why do humans reproduce sexually?
  
• Evolutionary trade-offs: sickle cell disease and malaria
  

The students have been given the option of delivering a conventional powerpoint presentation tomorrow morning or posting on a purpose-built blog, Darwin's Medical Students, by 7 pm tonight. I offered this latter option as an incentive for them to explore and evaluate the blogosphere as a tool for academic research. At least three of them have taken up this option. 

Please feel free to look at what they have written and provide constructive comments on their postings, links to other postings or literature etc etc just as if they were regular bloggers! As I explained to them, in a real sense, blogging is more peer-reviewed than the regular scientific literature, as dozens or even hundreds of people can comment. BUT be gentle with them—this is their first foray into the blogosphere!

We will be meeting up to discuss what they have learnt this week tomorrow at 9.30pm, so please read and comment in the next 12 hours.