What is an Epidemic?: Currents in Contemporary Bioethics

The reason we cannot say precisely how many times the term is used is that many historians think parts of Hippocrates's book were, like the Bible, altered or written by later commentators.

Hippocrates , Of the Epidemics, 400 BCE, available at <http://classics.mit.edu/Hippocrates/epidemics.html>(last visited August 1, 2014).

Oxford dictionary, s.v. “epidemic,” available at <http://oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/epidemic>(last visited August 1, 2014).

Walton J. Beeson P. , The Oxford Companion to Medicine (1st ed.), Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1986).

Lock S. Last J. Dunea G. , The Oxford Companion to Medicine, 3rd ed. (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2001).

Martin P. Martin-Grane E. , “2,500-Year Evolution of the Term Epidemic,” Emerging Infectious Diseases 12, no. 6 (2006): 976–980.

See supra note 3.

Sullum J. , “An Epidemic of Meddling,” Reason Magazine (2007), available at <http://reason.com/archives/2007/05/17/an-epidemic-of-meddling>(last visited August 1, 2014).

Doshi P. , “The Elusive Definition of Pandemic Influenza,” Bulletin of the World Health Organization 89 (2011): 532–538, available at <http://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/89/7/11–086173/en/>(last visited August 1, 2014).

O'Neil E. Naumova E. , “Defining Outbreak: Breaking Out of Confusion,” Journal of Public Health Policy 28, no. 4 (2007): 442–455.

Green M. , “When Is an Epidemic an Epidemic?” IMAJ 4 (2002): 3–6.

The case is admittedly different for children who lack the power (because of ignorance, immaturity, or parental oversight) to control their diet and exercise patterns. See Anomaly J. , “Is Obesity a Public Health Problem?” Public Health Ethics 5, no. 3 (2012): 216–221.

Mark Rothstein has suggested (in correspondence) that just as many people misleadingly use medical terms to apply to non-medical events – an “epidemic of crime” – they also use non-medical terms to describe our efforts at promoting medical research, as occurs when politicians declare “war on cancer.” This is bound to happen as language evolves, but allowing scientific nomenclature to reflect the evolution of words in popular discourse can be dangerous, since it can impact funding priorities. A similar point about the increasingly vague use of “public health” is made in Rothstein M. , “Rethinking the Meaning of Public Health,” Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics 30, no. 2 (2002): 144–149.

See supra note 10, at 448.

Orwell G. , “Politics and the English Language,” 1946.