Department of Government, The College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, VA 23187-8795, USA.
Biol Rev Camb Philos Soc. 2012 Feb;87(1):163-7. doi: 10.1111/j.1469-185X.2011.00189.x. Epub 2011 Jun 26.
Letendre, Fincher & Thornhill (2010) argue that pathogen intensity provides the ultimate explanation for why some countries are more prone to civil war than others. They argue that the economic and political factors highlighted in previous research on civil war are largely caused by underlying differences in pathogen intensity, and contend that disease proneness increases the risk of civil war through its effects on resource competition and xenophobia. They present empirical evidence that they interpret as consistent with their argument: a statistically significant correlation between pathogen intensity and civil war onset. In this comment, we raise concerns over their interpretation of the empirical evidence and their proposed causal mechanisms. We find that the data provide stronger evidence for the reverse causal relationship, namely that civil war causes disease to become more prevalent. This finding is consistent with the literatures on the public health effects of civil war as well as research on state capacity and public health.
让滕德雷、芬彻和桑希尔（2010）认为，病原体强度为为何一些国家比其他国家更容易发生内战提供了最终解释。他们认为，先前关于内战的研究中强调的经济和政治因素在很大程度上是由病原体强度的潜在差异造成的，并认为疾病易感性通过对资源竞争和仇外心理的影响增加了内战的风险。他们提出了实证证据，他们认为这些证据与他们的论点一致：病原体强度与内战爆发之间存在统计学上显著的相关性。在这篇评论中，我们对他们对实证证据的解释和提出的因果机制表示关注。我们发现，数据为相反的因果关系提供了更强的证据，即内战导致疾病更为普遍。这一发现与内战对公共卫生的影响以及关于国家能力和公共卫生的研究相一致。
