 The disagreement between Amundson and Boorse on the distinction between disease and disability is not just a matter of semantics. The critical point in Amundson’s analysis is a practical one. Medical interventions are the presumptive response to disease; they seek to slow, arrest, or reverse processes that cause pain and may lead to physiological dysfunction, (further) disability (in Amundson’s terms), or death. But on Amundson’s view, which makes disability consistent with health, the presumptive response to disability need not be medical as opposed to environmental or social. Furthermore, the loss of opportunity associated with disabilities can often be prevented or mitigated more effectively and (in the long run) more economically by modifying the physical and social environment than by medical intervention. This is true even though environmental measures are likely to fare poorly against medical interventions in the competition for scarce resources, because of the prestige and perceived importance of medical treatment. The failure to distinguish disease and disability, and the tendency to favor a medical response for both, reflects the sway of the medical model, and offers a clear illustration of how it differs from the social model (see  SEP entry on disability: definitions, models, experience).