sick/healthy organism

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Hi,

I am trying to define "healthy organism" and "sick organism" in the context
of the Influenza Ontology, and I believe those should belong in OGMS.

Current definition of disease reads "A disposition (i) to undergo
pathological processes that (ii) exists in an organism because of one or
more disorders in that organism." As per its definition, it is asserted
under bfo:disposition.

The explanation in the
http://ontology.buffalo.edu/medo/Disease_and_Diagnosis.pdf paper reads:
A disposition is an attribute of an organism in virtue of which it will
initiate certain specific sorts of processes when certain conditions are
satisfied. 
Examples are: our disposition to crave liquid following dehydration; the
disposition of an epithelial cell in the G2 phase of the cell cycle to
become diploid following mitosis. In any organism there is a wide variety
of dispositions, some associated with health, others with disease. 
We use ‘realization’ to refer to the process through which a disposition is
realized, and we shall identify diseases as dispositions realized in
pathological processes.

Based on this, it seems that "health" would be an other disposition. I am
not sure how to define "health": I would intuitively say health = free from
disease, however talking bout dispositions organisms always bear both, they
are just realized or not. In any case we would need a process equivalent to
disease course, something similar to "health/free from disease course
process" in which the health disposition is realized.

Any suggestion on how to add this term?

I am then unsure how to proceed for "sick organism": it is neither input_of
nor output_of a disease course process (def: The totality of all processes
through which a given disease instance is realized.), it is undergoing the
process. Similarly, a healthy organism is an organism not currently
participating in a disease course process. Is has_agent (def: As for
has_participant, but with the additional condition that the component
instance is causally active in the relevant process) the appropriate
relation to use, then saying disease course process has_agent sick organism
and health course process has_agent healthy organism? 

Thanks,
Melanie

Original issue reported on code.google.com by mcour...@gmail.com on 9 Mar 2010 at 12:42

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I think 'health' is the term that belongs in OGMS, rather than 'healthy' or 
'healthy
organism' (what do you think?) since it is something that inheres in an 
organism.  In
any event, the WHO gives a broader definition of 'health' than being 
disease-free:

"Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not 
merely
the absence of disease or infirmity."
http://www.who.int/about/definition/en/print.html

Of course, this would leave us having to define "well being", and we don't have
states in BFO.  Perhaps the best way to get at this is to consider health as a
quality which confers dispositions toward proper (canonical) functioning on the
organism that bears it.

Further thoughts?

Original comment by albertgo...@gmail.com on 31 Mar 2010 at 5:58

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I thought we define 'sick organism' and 'healthy organism' as defined classes 
of an organism at time t who is/is not participating in a process that realizes 
a disease disposition it bears. 

Original comment by bjoern.p...@gmail.com on 5 Aug 2010 at 7:12