ICD | Johns Hopkins University Press Blog
Ebola and How We Talk about It
Guest post by Annemarie Goldstein Jutel
Diseases are much more than the viruses which cause them. Even in the presence of well-defined physical illness, social and cultural beliefs and behaviors have a strong impact on how we can understand the disease and mitigate its impact. The Ebola virus provides us with an excellent example. A source both of fascination and fear, this virus highlights just how the words we use to discuss it influence its impact on the ground.
Classifying disease has roles which go beyond simply helping someone to get better. The whole process of classifying diseases formally and maintaining public health records emerged at the same time as the modern state, with disease tracking part of how nations sought to identify and protect their citizenry. Nineteenth-century epidemics such as influenza and cholera were constrained in their spread by the length of time it took for sick people to travel; the slowness of transport meant that the sick normally died before they could travel far enough to spread the disease. Today, however, because of the increasing efficiency of travel, germs can travel from country to country, spreading disease across national borders: disease victims have a chance of surviving long enough to pollute a second nation. Classifications therefore had to be able to cross national boundaries with the germs.
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