• Question: can you prevent every type of disease?

    Asked by anon-251251 to Ella on 27 Apr 2020.
    • Photo: Ella Mercer

      Ella Mercer answered on 27 Apr 2020:

      Oooo that’s such a hard question! Right now we definitely can’t and I personally don’t think we’ll be able to for hundreds of years (if ever!) Lots of diseases are genetic so they’re built into our DNA. There’s a new technology called CRISPR that is trying to change people’s genes so they don’t get diseases but there’s only been a small number of experiments in humans. Plus, as we’ve evolved, diseases have always evolved too. Wouldn’t it be so amazing if we could?? Do you think we can prevent every type of disease? If you could pick one to prevent, what would it be?

Comments

  • Photo: Wei

    Wei commented on :

    Hi, that question is music to a public health scientist like me. The short answer is no, not all diseases but we can prevent a lot of the bad consequences of illnesses.

    If we go to look at what makes people ill and die, (from WHO website here: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/the-top-10-causes-of-death ), the top causes are eg heart diseases (eg high blood pressure), lung diseases associated with smoking, diabetes from obesity. So a huge proportion of current deaths and illnesses are thought to be associated with unhealthy lifestyle – diet, exercise, smoking, drinking. In theory all of these can be prevented to a considerable extent.

    So we know what is bad for us, why is it so difficult to change people’s behavior? Just to given an example: we have been trying to warn people about the dangers of tobacco smoking for the last 70 years, yet people still smoke despite the many many interventions to discourage them. What has made a big difference to the rate of smoking has been 1) the smoking ban in public places, and 2) the invention of electronic cigarettes (we don’t know the long term effects yet).