Disease & Pathology

How would you explain the difference between a disease, a symptom, and a diagnosis to someone with no medical background? Why do some people develop severe illness from an infection while others exposed to the same germ barely get sick at all? How do doctors and pathologists decide whether something counts as a separate disease or just a variation of an existing condition? What are the main ways diseases can be classified, and why does that classification matter for treatment and research? Can you think of an illness that has changed in how society understands or labels it over the last few decades?

What actually happens inside the body when the immune system recognizes and responds to an invading virus or bacterium? Why can inflammation be both life-saving in some situations and harmful or destructive in others? How do vaccines train the immune system differently from getting an infection naturally? What social and economic factors influence who is most exposed to infectious diseases in a community? How have recent global outbreaks changed public understanding of infection and immunity, for better or worse?

What makes a disease 'chronic', and how does living with a long-term condition differ from recovering from a short illness? How do genetics, environment, and lifestyle interact to shape a person’s risk for conditions like heart disease or diabetes? Why do chronic diseases often cluster in certain neighborhoods or populations rather than being evenly distributed? What kinds of changes at the level of cities, workplaces, or food systems could reduce chronic disease risk? How can people balance personal responsibility for health with the recognition that many risk factors are outside individual control?

What basic mistakes do cancer cells make compared with healthy cells in how they divide, grow, and die? Why is cancer not really a single disease, even when tumors arise in the same organ? How do screening tests both help and sometimes complicate decisions about cancer treatment? What are the main trade-offs between aggressive treatment to extend life and preserving quality of life in cancer care? How have stories in media and culture shaped public understanding and fear of cancer?

What does it mean to say that a disease has a 'genetic component', and how is that different from being genetically determined? How can small changes in DNA contribute to large differences in disease risk among individuals or families? In what ways can environmental exposures, such as pollution or stress, turn genes 'on' or 'off' over time? What ethical questions arise when people learn they have a higher genetic risk for a serious illness? How might wider access to genetic testing change health care, insurance, and personal decision-making about disease prevention?

How do clinicians decide which tests or imaging studies are truly necessary to diagnose a patient’s condition? What are the differences between sensitivity and specificity in medical tests, and why do they matter for real patients? How can false positives and false negatives in testing lead to anxiety, over-treatment, or missed disease? What role do pathologists and radiologists play behind the scenes in confirming or refining diagnoses? How might AI-assisted imaging and pattern recognition change the way diseases are detected in the future?