One Health—One Medicine: unifying human and animal medicine within an evolutionary paradigm

Currier, Russell W.; Steele, James H.

One health is a concept since early civilization, which promoted the view that there was no major distinction between animal and human medicine. Although persisting through the 19th century, this common vision was then all but forgotten in the early 20th century. It is now experiencing a renaissance, coincident with an awakening of the role that evolutionary biology plays in human and animal health, including sexually transmitted infections (STIs). A number of STIs in humans have comparable infections in animals; likewise, both humans and animals have STIs unique to each mammalian camp. These similarities and differences offer opportunities for basic medical and public health studies, including evolutionary insights that can be gleaned from ongoing interdisciplinary investigation—especially with the molecular analytical tools available—in what can become a golden age of mutually helpful discovery.