The Consequences of Shocking the System: Comparing Evolution and Disasters

Professor John Martin and Dr. Rozana Himaz draw from their research in medical science and economics to explore how a shock can affect people across their lifetime, across future generations and even across millions of years. 

Rozana Himaz’s work uses longitudinal household surveys that follow the same individual or households across many years and statistical methods to understand how a ‘shock’ that is external to the system such as parental death, a tsunami or an earthquake, can have significant consequences in the short and longer terms. These consequences need not always be negative – some negative shocks can lead to positive outcomes in the medium and longer term. But some shocks can have indirect and cascading effects that can lead to adverse outcomes with intergenerational consequences.

John Martin’s study of platelets (small cells in the blood needed to stop bleeding) led him to a new theory of the evolution of mammals and therefore humans. This theory is a companion to Darwin’s theory. The new theory proposes that 220 million years ago there was an explosive change within one animal, in the cells that stop bleeding. That change was inherited by offspring giving future generations an advantage through natural selection. Better blood clotting that occurred allowed the evolution of the placenta and therefore mammals and therefore humans. One shock event in one egg laying animal was necessary for us to exist.