title: Taking sociology seriously: a new approach to the bioethical problems of infectious disease.
abstract: After a history of neglect, bioethicists have recently turned their attention to the topic of infectious disease. In this paper we link bioethicists' earlier neglect of infectious disease to their under-appreciation of the extent to which the problem of infectious disease is related to social factors and thus to questions of justice. We argue that a social causation of illness model - well-known to sociologists of medicine, but incompletely understood by bioethicists - will improve future bioethical analysis of issues related to infectious disease. By emphasising the relationships between social and economic structures of inequality and health, the social causation model provides a richer approach to ethical issues associated with infectious disease than the more commonly used biomedical model.
authors.affiliation: Department of Sociology, University of Akron, OH 44325-1905, USA. mtausig@uakron.edu
authors.forename: Mark
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Tausig
authors.forename: Michael J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Selgelid
authors.forename: Sree
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Subedi
authors.forename: Janardan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Subedi
mesh_terms: D001675:Bioethics / Q000639:trends*; D003141:Communicable Diseases / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000209:etiology* / Q000401:mortality; D003906:Developing Countries; D006801:Humans; D011203:Poverty; D012962:Sociology, Medical / Q000941:ethics* / Q000639:trends