websters wrote: An alteration in the state of the body or of some of its organs, interrupting or disturbing the performance of the vital functions, and causing or threatening pain and weakness.
And this says nothing about the cause. Dictionary definitions are extremely general, and are intended for laymen. Doctors don't go by Webster's, they use medical books. Ill health casused by injury is not considered disease. Find me one doctor who would call a burn or a stab wound a disease.
Holy shit people. You stun me. Truly. I have never seen people cling so tenaciously to fallacious, circular reasoning in my life. "Ill health is caused by disease, therefore all causes of ill health are considered disease."
Bullshit. There are many causes of ill health. Disease is only one.
Perinquus wrote:
If they are trying to relate gunshot wounds to disease, then they are stretching the term. If they are using some other justification to take a position on the matter then the point is moot. However, I feel constrained to point out that they seem strangely less concerned with automobile fatalities, for example, which far outnumber shooting deaths. This leads me to suspect an ideological bias.
I don't think they're relating gunshot wounds to disease ... I think the mission statement is pretty clear that CDC is also concerned with other issues as well as disease. The point is their title, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is no longer completely inclusive of their mission.
Transportation related accidents & fatalities, including car accidents, are handled mostly by local law enforcement and the National Highway & Transportation Safety Administration, another Federal-level project.
Taking on the NHTSA's duties as well as their own would just be redundant.
Perinquus wrote:
If they are trying to relate gunshot wounds to disease, then they are stretching the term. If they are using some other justification to take a position on the matter then the point is moot. However, I feel constrained to point out that they seem strangely less concerned with automobile fatalities, for example, which far outnumber shooting deaths. This leads me to suspect an ideological bias.
I don't think they're relating gunshot wounds to disease ... I think the mission statement is pretty clear that CDC is also concerned with other issues as well as disease. The point is their title, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is no longer completely inclusive of their mission.
Transportation related accidents & fatalities, including car accidents, are handled mostly by local law enforcement and the National Highway & Transportation Safety Administration, another Federal-level project.
Taking on the NHTSA's duties as well as their own would just be redundant.
Gunshot fatalities and injuries are also handled by local law enforcement. Why are they interested in taking on this duty from other agencies, but not others?
[quote=Perinquus]Gunshot fatalities and injuries are also handled by local law enforcement. Why are they interested in taking on this duty from other agencies, but not others?[quote]
Federal agencies work with local law enforcement or appropriate local officials in almost every case. Neither CDC nor NHTSA remove local officials from the process, they cooperate with them to get Federal level assistance and to coordinate national efforts to reduce, for instance, break-outs of West Nile (CDC working with local officials to educate & prevent), or reduce drunk driving (NHTSA working with local law enforcement to educate & prevent).
There's about a snowball's chance in hell that a Federal agency with about 8,500 employees is taking over the job of local law enforcement.
Perinquus wrote:Gunshot fatalities and injuries are also handled by local law enforcement. Why are they interested in taking on this duty from other agencies, but not others?
Federal agencies work with local law enforcement or appropriate local officials in almost every case. Neither CDC nor NHTSA remove local officials from the process, they cooperate with them to get Federal level assistance and to coordinate national efforts to reduce, for instance, break-outs of West Nile (CDC working with local officials to educate & prevent), or reduce drunk driving (NHTSA working with local law enforcement to educate & prevent).
There's about a snowball's chance in hell that a Federal agency with about 8,500 employees is taking over the job of local law enforcement.
Which misses the point. Auto fatalities take more lives every years than firearms. Yet CDC is more interested in regulating firearms than it is in automobiles. So what if NHTSA is involved in auto fatalities? The FBI and BATF are involved in firearms related matters. CDC is selectively judging what kinds of non-disease related health risks it is choosing to involve itself in, and it's not choosing the most numerically predominant ones - just the most politically correct.
Perinquus wrote:[snip]
Auto fatalities take more lives every years than firearms. Yet CDC is more interested in regulating firearms than it is in automobiles. So what if NHTSA is involved in auto fatalities? The FBI and BATF are involved in firearms related matters. CDC is selectively judging what kinds of non-disease related health risks it is choosing to involve itself in, and it's not choosing the most numerically predominant ones - just the most politically correct.
The CDC's involvement is different than the FBI's or BATF. Were the CDC to become involved with car accidents and fatalities, it would be a waste of resouces. FBI and BATF are primarily concerned with enforcement, rather than prevention. The NHTSA already works on accident investigation as well as prevention.
Any bias is more likely because of monetary concerns. Wrangling more money out of the federal budget to duplicate another Federal agency's efforts is dodgy at best.
Gil Hamilton wrote:Actually, Perinquus, he's technically right. A disease is defined as a condition of the living animal or plant body or of one of its parts that impairs normal functioning. For practical purposes, I wouldn't cause every hurt a disease, after all, banging my big toe on a door that made me limp back to the computer could be considered a disease.
So what makes gunshot wounds a special exception? You yourself just admitted that not every hurt is worthy of being called a disease. So why are bullets, when say, auto accidents are not?
Admit it, you're using a purely subjective criteria to justify a position that is untenable if you are concerning yourself with diseases.
If you have a problem with this particular usage of the English language then either go and write a letter to the OED or complain to the CDC or just accept that what I said wasn't wrong and I'm just the messenger. Jesus, even I don't see why the CDC should concern themselves with these matters when they have perfectly capable pathogens on the loose to be worried about.
Admiral Valdemar wrote:Incidentally, it was my local GP that told me you could technically class a broken arm as a "disease" using such a definition in the first place.
Which really means he's making my point for me. If you accept this definition, anything can be a disease, and the word disease ceases to have any real meaning. It ceases to be a useful term to apply to actual diseases such as cancer, or AIDS, or smallpox, etc. Sorry, I simply do not accept that definition of disease. It's not the proper use of the word. Diseases are called diseases and injuries are called injuries. There is a reason we have two different terms for these things; they are not the same and they should not be called the same thing.
Perinquus wrote:So what makes gunshot wounds a special exception? You yourself just admitted that not every hurt is worthy of being called a disease. So why are bullets, when say, auto accidents are not?
Admit it, you're using a purely subjective criteria to justify a position that is untenable if you are concerning yourself with diseases.
Hey, I was just saying he was technically right, not that I was taking his position.
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Admiral Valdemar wrote:Incidentally, it was my local GP that told me you could technically class a broken arm as a "disease" using such a definition in the first place.
Which really means he's making my point for me. If you accept this definition, anything can be a disease, and the word disease ceases to have any real meaning. It ceases to be a useful term to apply to actual diseases such as cancer, or AIDS, or smallpox, etc. Sorry, I simply do not accept that definition of disease. It's not the proper use of the word. Diseases are called diseases and injuries are called injuries. There is a reason we have two different terms for these things; they are not the same and they should not be called the same thing.
Well hey, that's my view too, I'm only laying the foundation for what is otherwise a vaguely defined term used outside the normal context. That is, the CDC using the term that loosely. I still don't get why they research that stuff, but that's how the Feds are calling the shots.
