Pediatrics & Anthropology

Dr. Paul W. Turke

Dr. Turke is the world’s first Darwinian pediatrician. He earned his medical degree from Michigan State University’s College of Human Medicine in 1996, and then completed a residency in pediatrics at the University of Michigan’s Mott Children’s Hospital in 1999. He is board-certified and has been practicing pediatrics for 25 years in a private office setting in Dexter, Michigan with his friend and business partner, Dr. Suzanne Thomashow.

In addition to his formal medical education, Dr. Turke has done fieldwork in anthropology and demography on the Micronesian islands of Ifaluk and Yap, with a focus on childcare kinship networks.  He’s published articles on topics ranging from the evolution of sex, to childhood food allergies, to why Covid-19 is less severe in the young than it is in the elderly.

Dr. Turke also has a new book called Bringing Up Baby: An Evolutionary View of Pediatrics (now available on Amazon), which uses evolutionary theory and what’s known about our evolutionary history to answer questions that he and other pediatricians hear over and over again from parents seeking advice on how to raise happy, healthy, kind, thoughtful children. His book also answers many questions that most physicians and medical scientists have not thought to ask, like these: why can’t women reproduce without men, say by becoming parthenogens; why are children better able to tolerate a grain-based diet than their grandparents; why did our maximum lifespan double compared to that of other apes, both living and extinct; and what does the doubling of our lifespan tell us about the path to happiness in old age?

Bringing Up Baby is both useful and fun to read. Each chapter begins with a personal story, and along the way reveals the importance of understanding evolution, whether you happen to be a parent asking questions or a pediatrician trying to answer them.