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That's OK, not everyone has to agree about a particular description. If medicine gets to the point where a single substance or chemical can be easily avoided t
by notadoc 9y ago
That's OK, not everyone has to agree about a particular description.
If medicine gets to the point where a single substance or chemical can be easily avoided to entirely prevent diabetes, cancer, or heart disease, the same way that someone can entirely avoid alcoholism by simply not drinking alcohol, that will be quite an achievement.
But this ignores the strong sociological component of addiction and substance abuse. Nobody is choosing to try cancer to self medicate depression, nobody is testing out heart disease to treat their pain or torment, and nobody is giving diabetes a whirl to address a sociological condition.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- jahnu 9y agoPeople chose lifestyles that can cause cancer etc. So yeah I'll go with the medical definition of a disease.
- dragonwriter 9y ago> Nobody is choosing to try cancer to self medicate depression, nobody is testing out heart disease to treat their pain or torment, and nobody is giving diabetes a whirl to address a sociological condition Like addiction, all of those can be side effects of things people do for exactly those purposes. In fact, heart disease and cancer are, like addiction, specifically frequently consequences of substance use directed at those purposes (and not just illegal substances; tobacco and alcohol are major culprits.)
- simonh 9y ago>But this ignores the strong sociological component of addiction and substance abuse... Bullshit. All kinds of medical conditions and their treatment involve sociological factors. Treating drug abuse as a health issue in no way precludes dealing with its sociological context. Picking and choose medical conditions that differ markedly from substance abuse and contrasting them is disingenuous. What about other medical conditions that are much more similar such as dietary conditions, overeating disorders, etc? There are a whole range of metabolic diseases caused by or associated with patterns of consumption that are very similar and often even have sociological factors associated with them. These are treated as public health issues. Substance abuse is just another category of related conditions.
- curun1r 9y ago> and nobody is giving diabetes a whirl to address a sociological condition Actually, yes, they are. There's no more perfect disease that you could have chosen to disprove your own argument. Adult-onset diabetes is almost always a variant of substance addiction. It's just that we classify the drug "food" and sell it in the grocery store. But we shouldn't kid ourselves, sugary, highly-processed "foods" are a drug that is intended to be every bit as addictive as alcohol. The sugar high is like being drunk, the subsequent crash is like a hangover and diabetes is like the liver damage that results from alcoholism. The two diseases are remarkably similar.
- KGIII 9y ago> not everyone has to agree about a particular description Well, we do if we want to have a discussion about a particular problem. Using the description from the experts in the subject certainly seems like a good place to start. You can define food as shards of metal and glass but that means I'm probably not going to take culinary advice from you.
- rbanffy 9y ago> That's OK, not everyone has to agree about a particular description. Unless you are an expert, I suggest you follow the guidance of the people who have been studying the subject for almost a hundred years.