How to answer “Who decides what counts as a disease?” in a medical school interview

What this question tests

• Critical thinking
• Ethical reasoning
• Health systems and advocacy

How to approach it

This panel interview question tests whether you can reason about where ordinary human variation ends and a medical problem begins, and who gets a say in drawing that line. Keep your answer on the ethics and the stakes of labeling, which need no clinical detail. Name the groups with an interest: the people living with the condition, physicians, researchers, insurers, businesses that sell products for the condition, and society at large. Weigh what a label can give, such as access to care, insurance coverage and validation, against what it can cost, such as stigma, unnecessary treatment and companies expanding a category for profit. Use aging, shyness or baldness to show how your view might change with how much a condition limits a person's life. End with a clear position on who should decide and what safeguards should shape that decision.