Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2007
ISSN
0190-6593
Publisher
Western New England College School of Law
Language
en-US
Abstract
Malcolm Gladwell explored the way certain ideas and behaviors can proliferate "just like viruses do" once they achieve a critical mass in The Tipping Point,' his best-seller about the sorts of widespread and rapidly adopted social phenomena he labels epidemics. Gladwell's subtitle, "How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference," indicates that he thinks it need not take much to get one of these social epidemics rolling. He does believe, however, that three factors are essential: getting "people with a particular and rare set of social gifts" involved,2 packaging the ideas so they are "irresistible" under the circumstances, 3 and making sure that both the right people and the right presentation can be deployed in the perfect context for change.4 That usually means inheriting or creating a situation where one can "tinker[ ] with the smallest details of the immediate environment" to unleash the idea's potential for reaching a tipping point, and thus morph into an epidemic leading to change.5
As I thought about tying the six thought-provoking essays included in this Symposium on The Politics of Health Law together under some sort of unifying theme, Gladwell's theories kept coming back to me. How would the issues these distinguished authors address-the Schiavo imbroglio, the constitutionality or criminality of palliative care, organ donation from minors, medical tourism and outsourcing, the way political ideology affects health care access, and pending federal legislation to expand individual insurance fare when examined through the lens of Gladwell's analytical theories? Are any of the health care issues explored in this Symposium heading for the kind of tipping point that might change the way society traditionally grapples with them? The more I thought about using this organizing theme for knitting these seemingly disparate essays together, the more I came to view the articles as sorting themselves onto a continuum moving away from a theoretical potential for tipping point status, depending on how many of Gladwell's three conditions for epidemic status were present. Whether Tipping Point theory really has anything predictive to say about the future course of these issues I cannot say, but the exercise has been an interesting way to tease apart their differences.
Recommended Citation
Frances H. Miller,
Foreword: The Politics of Health Law: Any Tipping Points in View?
,
in
29
Western New England Law Review
265
(2007).
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.bu.edu/faculty_scholarship/2039
