Viewing Disease as the Synergistic Interaction of Host, Agent, and Environment

Abstract

The agent of disease, whether it is an infectious organism, the deficiency or excess of a nutrient, a toxin, or the expression of a gene, is not sufficient to explain its cause. The impact of the agent depends on host factors and the influence of physical, biological, and social factors in the environment. For nutritional disorders those of the social environment, including the complex of educational, economic, religious, political, and other factors, are likely to be the most important and also the most difficult to understand and modify. If nutritional and other diseases are viewed as problems in human ecology, the primary health-care approach to their prevention follows naturally.