Diseases as Flowers

Which came first, the chicken or the egg?  Upon reading the assignments for this upcoming week, I was taken aback by just how complex a disease can be.  Not just biologically, but socially, economically, culturally…  Which came first, structural violence or AIDS?  While I do not mean to sound philosophical, I do want to point to just how many factors go into a disease.  Farmer discusses in many of his writing his work with HIV/AIDS.  Dependent on so many factors, a person’s chance of contracting this disease can vary.  And if a person with say, a 45% of contracting HIV (being “at risk” for the disease) moves to another country, then what?  One’s odds increase or decrease.  This concept is not new, it is social determinants of health, but it is interesting as always to look upon.  I want to take this blog post to reflect on the readings for this upcoming week.

            I have always enjoyed breaking large concepts into easy to understand concepts, I think it is crucially important for everyone, regardless of education level, to understand concepts like these.  Everyone including me, because some concepts are really hard to understand.  A disease, such as AIDS, can be more or less likely to affect a person based on many factors.  These factors are vast, but mainly include (in no particular order) socioeconomic status (money), race, ethnicity, geographical location, occupation, education, gender, hunger, social engagement, support, and safety.  Generally, there is a strong relationship between being disadvantaged in these factors and having a higher rate of disease or mortality (death).  So how do we address these factors?  Why does that relationship exist?  Farmer argues that health and human rights are inextricably connected (impossible to be separated).  If we wish to improve health of those that are “at risk,” we must look toward basic human rights and suffering.  If being less educated makes one more at risk of getting AIDS, then we need to first address the issue of the right to education than cost-effective medicines to treat AIDS.  People with AIDS do not want cost-effective treatments they want to not have AIDS to begin with.

In a strange (and hopefully not too hippy) way I think diseases could be looked at as flowers: if a flower gets sick and turns brown, why?  Was it because it wasn’t in enough sunlight?  Did it have a chance to be in the sun?  Did its owner not water it enough?  Was it the right type of water it needed?  Were its roots in enough soil?  What was the condition of the soil?  Did the genetic makeup of its seed doom it to an early death?  This is a lot of thought and effort to look into a dead flower, but the concept can easily be applied to a diseased human.  When we look at disease our first, third, tenth, hundredth question should be, why?  Maybe then we can begin to address and fix the issues behind diseases instead of just diseases themselves.