I appreciate the link, but this isn't a matter of whether being black lowers social status - what I disputed is the original assertion that illness is defined by the effect on social status.
You're right that most people will undergo procedures to eliminate undesirable traits and create or enhance desirable ones - your body odor example is apt - but that's a lifestyle choice.
It seems there's a misunderstanding here. I was talking about sufficient, not necessary conditions. There are obviously proper types of "illness" like cancer, flu, and such.
And on top of that, treatable things that lower social status, are very often added to the list. Can you think of many counterexamples?
There was some talk here about height taxes, but there's a better solution - redefine shortness as a treatable condition and use HGH to cure it. They even got FDA on board with that, at least for 1.2% shortest people.
Unsatisfactory sexual performance became a treatable condition with Viagra. Depression and hyperactivity became treatable conditions with SSRIs. Being ugly is already almost considered a treatable condition, at least one can get that impression from cosmetic surgery ads. Being overweight is universally considered an illness, even though we don't have too many effective treatment options (surgery is unpopular, and effective drugs like fen-phen and ECA are not officially prescribed any more). If we ever figure out how to increase IQ, you can be certain low IQ will be considered a treatable condition too. Almost everything undesirable gets redefined as an illness as soon as an effective way to fix it is developed.
I welcome these changes. Yes, redefining large parts of normal human variability as illness is a lie, but if that's what society needs to work around its taboos against human enhancement, so be it.