Fwd: DiseaseEntityModel - Caroline Whitbeck paper

[Chimezie Ogbuji]

Below are excerpts from Caronline Whitbeck's seminal paper on a
Disease Entity Model regarding the difference between causal
relationships and necessary / sufficient conditions. It provides a
decent framework to distinguish between the semantics of CPR's
isConsequenceOf, BFO/RO's ro:agent_in, and BioTop's is_realization_of
predicate as it relates to diseases, disease processes, and
etiological agents of a disease.

-- Chime

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: <chim...@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, Nov 18, 2009 at 6:14 PM
Subject: DiseaseEntityModel - Caroline Whitbeck paper
To: chim...@gmail.com


I've shared a document with you:

DiseaseEntityModel
http://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0BxSWqL2FXVtBMjlmYjNlODAtNTdiMy00NGU4LWEwOGQtZGMyMDA3YzVjNmM5&hl=en

It's not an attachment -- it's stored online at Google Docs. To open
this document, just click the link above.

Excerpts from Page 9 / 626 (the relevant section regarding causal
relationships v.s. necessary and/or sufficient conditions):

".. notice first of all that the necessary and sufficient conditions
for an occurrence are not regarded as causally related to it if they
could not in principle serve what may be called our instrumental
interests, i.e., our interest in controlling, in preventing or
producing, states of affairs. The fact that it is a necessary
condition for something to be a dog that it be a mammal and that it is
sufficient for something to be a mammal that it be a dog, does not at
all affect the strategy of a person threatened by dogs or desiring
mammals; there is no preventing the dog by preventing its being a
mammal, nor of producing the mammal by making it canine."

Also..

..The foregoing considerations serve to explain why it strikes us as
peculiar to say "an abundant supply of oxygen causes health," but find
it acceptable to say "contact with mosquitoes carrying a certain
protozoan causes malaria" even though in both cases the cause
mentioned is a (causally related) necessary condition of the effect.
In the first case the outcome mentioned is typically one we wish to
produce or insure, and for that purpose we are really interested in
sufficient conditions. We are thus interested in oxygen supply only in
its role as constituting a part of a sufficient condition, and hence
find it more appropriate to say "an abundant supply of oxygen
contributes to good health."..

..and..

"Such a contributing condition or cause differs from a necessary
condition in that its absence does not guarantee the non-occurrence of
the phenomenon in question."

[Sivaram Arabandi]

Chime,
It is interesting to think of manifestations of a disease i.e symptoms & signs, as a 'part of' a DiseaseProcess. We can think of a DiseaseState as a collection of the symptoms & signs.

-Sivaram