[Suffering without meaning? Illness, pain and death. Development of evolutionary medicine]

The human species is an optimized product of evolution. This realization and knowledge of the highly sensitive and sensible biocybernetical processes in our bodies is now largely out of sight in modern medicine. To develop an evolutionary and cross-cultural perspective of human life and its biological, psychic and social conditions is therefore particularly important for the health sciences. Birth behaviour, intensive care for premature babies, post-partum dysphoria, sudden infant death, hip dysplasia, cry babies, eating disorders, stress-induced diseases, depression, ageing and dying serve as examples to sketch this new approach. It may probably facilitate diagnostic and therapeutic schemes which will be better adapted to human needs and capacities and can, therefore, be more successful than the ones in the past.