Ewbank, Douglas

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1995 - 199912000 - 20091
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  • Publication
    Natural Selection in a Contemporary Human Population
    (2009-10-26) Ewbank, Douglas
    Our aims were to demonstrate that natural selection is operating on contemporary humans, predict future evolutionary change for specific traits with medical significance, and show that for some traits we can make short-term predictions about our future evolution. To do so, we measured the strength of selection, estimated genetic variation and covariation, and predicted the response to selection for women in the Framingham Heart Study, a project of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute and Boston University that began in 1948. We found that natural selection is acting to cause slow, gradual evolutionary change. The descendants of these women are predicted to be on average slightly shorter and stouter, to have lower total cholesterol levels and systolic blood pressure, to have their first child earlier, and to reach menopause later than they would in the absence of evolution. Selection is tending to lengthen the reproductive period at both ends. To better understand and predict such changes, the design of planned large, long-term, multicohort studies should include input from evolutionary biologists.
  • Publication
    Alzheimer’s Disease as a Cause of Death in the U.S.: Estimates and Projections
    (1995-04-19) Ewbank, Douglas C.
    The phrase "the demography of Alzheimer's disease" may be the best litmus test to distinguish demographers from epidemiologists. A typical reaction to this phrase from a demographer is "why Alzheimer's disease?" A typical reaction from an epidemiologist is "why demography?" It is always tricky to describe the exact boundaries that separate two similar disciplines and this is especially true of the difference between demographic and epidemiologic approaches to mortality and health. What made Preston's work on smoking and mortality demography rather than epidemiology? What differentiates a demographer's or a sociologist's work on factors affecting residence in nursing homes from an epidemiologist's work on the same topic?