Disease and Population
Three categories of disease
- Diseases associated with poverty persisted while other diseases emerged as new epidemics and threats to human populations, in some cases leading to social disruption.
- The CED's three categories: diseases associated with poverty (malaria, tuberculosis, cholera), emergent epidemic diseases (the 1918 influenza pandemic, Ebola, HIV/AIDS), and diseases associated with increased longevity (heart disease, Alzheimer's).
- Sorting a disease into the right category is most of the analysis.
Select all the diseases the CED associates with poverty.
Alzheimer's is in the longevity category.
Poverty diseases persisted
- The CED's verb is persisted, and it is chosen carefully: these are treatable and preventable conditions that continued anyway.
- So their persistence is a fact about distribution — of clean water, of medicines, of clinics — rather than about medical knowledge.
- That makes them evidence for the inequality claims of 9.5 as well as for this subtopic.
The CED's verb for poverty-associated diseases is persisted, which points to...
These are treatable and preventable conditions that continued anyway.
Outbreaks drove advances
- These outbreaks spurred technological and medical advances.
- So the causal arrow runs both ways in this subtopic: disease changes societies, and societies answer with research.
- An answer that treats epidemics only as damage has missed the CED's own second clause.
Which of the CED's three categories?
Sort each disease by the category the CED gives it.
Epidemics in this period spurred technological and medical advances.
The causal arrow runs both ways — an answer treating epidemics only as damage misses that.
A rising rate can be evidence of success. The CED says some diseases occurred at higher incidence merely because of increased longevity — heart disease and Alzheimer's rise partly because the causes of death that used to come first were defeated.
Some diseases occurred at higher incidence ____ because of increased longevity.
So a rising rate can be evidence that an earlier cause of death was defeated.
Some diseases rose because people lived longer
- Some diseases occurred at higher incidence merely because of increased longevity.
- Merely is the CED's own word: the rise in heart disease and Alzheimer's is a consequence of 9.1's medical success.
- So a rising rate is not automatically bad news — it can be evidence that an earlier cause of death was defeated.
Match each disease category to its population effect.
Pairing a category with an effect is the shape of the answer.
Environmental factors and populations
- The objective is how environmental factors affected human populations over time.
- Disease is treated here as an environmental factor, alongside the resource and climate material of 9.3.
- So an answer can pair a disease category with a population effect: persistence with sustained mortality, emergence with disruption, longevity with a changed age structure.
Two societies report rising heart-disease rates. In one, more people are reaching seventy; in the other, diets and work have changed. The number is the same and the explanation is not — which is why the CED's word merely matters and why the category must be named before the rate is interpreted.
Diseases associated with poverty persisted (malaria, tuberculosis, cholera) while other diseases emerged as new epidemics (1918 influenza, Ebola, HIV/AIDS), in some cases leading to social disruption. These outbreaks spurred technological and medical advances. Some diseases occurred at higher incidence merely because of increased longevity — heart disease, Alzheimer's.