I also think its important to recognise COPD as a disease that could almost be considered as socially contsructed.
Smoking, the cause of COPD, is a habit that i believe is socially determined. By this i mean that there are a number of culturally determined trends and factors that influence smoking habits. For example, higher rates of smoking in lower socioeconomic groups in the UK. These trends are, however, changing over time and hopefully a reflection of decreasing rates of smoking will be seen in the incidence of COPD in the future. This begs the question as to how we can stop these rates going up in developing countries which are now have what we might call 'worse' smoking habits which developed nations once had.
