What an interesting angle! Of course, diseases are ideas - the
manifestation of disease theory. Outside patients they are only
concepts. As with other ideas/concepts they can blind us to the world
not encompassed by it. Using the cholera analogy, we could easily be so
mesmerized by the disease cholera, that we do not see that it is
actually a public health problem. That seems obvious to us now, but
surely the same is currently happening with the present day scourges of
the developed world - such as ischaemic heart disease, asthma,
depression, type 2 diabetes and cancer - all largely diseases of our
society taking root in the favourable soil of an individual. Disease
theory blinds us to it - or is it the daunting social engineering
required to tackle it? The Victorians were not daunted! How can
complexity theory help? I sense it might but I am still too much of a
beginner to understand how. William House




I wasn't there but it seems to me there was a tipping point on the 29th!


The Tipping Point is also the title of a pop management book by Malcom
Gladwell (Little Brown & Co.). His analysis of large scale behavioural
change is based on using the similie of ideas being like diseases. The
whole work is based around the disease (idea), the host (individuals)
and the environment in which both disease and host find themselves.

In contrast to public health medicine, Gladwell's book is dedicated to
spreading the "disease," with consequent benefits to society or
corporate balance sheets. He has a few more categories than the three
mentioned above, but it's basically treating the success of "Sesame
Street" as a cholera outbreak.

A few nice ideas in it though.



Ceri Brown