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Health Demographics (Epidemiology) in a Vegan Context
Context is king.
In the field of population health statistics (i.e. epidemiology), context allows scientists/medics to confidently assign explanation(s) for the trends they discover. Context is needed in all research fields, but is especially important in epidemiology. Otherwise we could mistakenly conclude that everyone who gets gum disease tends to have teeth, so teeth cause gum disease, as an extreme example.
From the start of modern epidemiology to the surveys on the effects of a vegan (plant-based) diet, context remains crucial.
John Snow, the recognised founder of modern epidemiology (i.e. population health statistics), famously tracked down the spread of a cholera pandemic down to the usage of a single London water pump in the 19th century [1]. As a sceptic of the prevailing “bad air” theory of contagious disease transfer, John Snow gave some context to the “germ theory” of disease by determining that the cholera patients all fetched water from a potentially contaminated source. Officially the theory of “miasma” (bad air) was the recognised cause of the outbreaks at the time, despite John Snow’s analysis. It is thought that the fear of political consequences from letting the general public know that their trusted water source had been contaminated by human faeces could have led to a delayed…
