Sasha
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
We've had some discussion before of what the criteria are for calling something a 'disease' rather than 'an illness' and I know we're all desperate to cross that threshold and be able to go around shouting, 'I told you! I've got a proper disease!'
But I have forgotten the criteria and the threshold is anyway looking a bit blurry. Will genetic associations take us over the threshold, and why haven't the ones we've already seen reported done so? What about the Zhang et al. study? @Jonathan Edwards's theory should be getting published as a Qeios preprint tomorrow, but what level and type of empirical confirmation of it (or bits of it) would be needed for us to have a 'disease'? What other front-runners could get us over the threshold? And who decides when we've crossed it?
But I have forgotten the criteria and the threshold is anyway looking a bit blurry. Will genetic associations take us over the threshold, and why haven't the ones we've already seen reported done so? What about the Zhang et al. study? @Jonathan Edwards's theory should be getting published as a Qeios preprint tomorrow, but what level and type of empirical confirmation of it (or bits of it) would be needed for us to have a 'disease'? What other front-runners could get us over the threshold? And who decides when we've crossed it?