With that out of the way, I do take exception with the idea of translating sometimes opaque disease names into descriptions of their "causal" mechanisms.
First, these "causal" descriptions are misleading because a lot of these diseases are complex and involve many interacting, moving parts. For example calling type 2 diabetes "overconsumption of processed food disease" is a drastic oversimplification that ignores many alternative paths to insulin resistance or insufficiency. In addition, overconsuming processed food is not a good thing, no doubt, and it has a lot of other possible consequences and can lead to many other co-morbidities. Similar comments apply to hypertension. Your other disease descriptions are less causal and more, well, descriptive of the condition.
Second, our understanding of diseases and their causal mechanisms is evolving constantly. For example, a lot of energy, effort and money went into addressing amyloid plaque in Alzheimer's disease but we know now that plaque is a correlate that is neither predictive nor explanatory. If Alzheimer's had been renamed "brain plaque disease" the misdirection would have been complete.
I will close by reiterating that I love the spirit of the post.
Jordan, I love your thinking and writings!
With that out of the way, I do take exception with the idea of translating sometimes opaque disease names into descriptions of their "causal" mechanisms.
First, these "causal" descriptions are misleading because a lot of these diseases are complex and involve many interacting, moving parts. For example calling type 2 diabetes "overconsumption of processed food disease" is a drastic oversimplification that ignores many alternative paths to insulin resistance or insufficiency. In addition, overconsuming processed food is not a good thing, no doubt, and it has a lot of other possible consequences and can lead to many other co-morbidities. Similar comments apply to hypertension. Your other disease descriptions are less causal and more, well, descriptive of the condition.
Second, our understanding of diseases and their causal mechanisms is evolving constantly. For example, a lot of energy, effort and money went into addressing amyloid plaque in Alzheimer's disease but we know now that plaque is a correlate that is neither predictive nor explanatory. If Alzheimer's had been renamed "brain plaque disease" the misdirection would have been complete.
I will close by reiterating that I love the spirit of the post.