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from the political-correctness-gone-more-rediculous dept.
From ScienceMag.org:
The World Health Organization (WHO) mostly works to reduce the physical toll of disease. But last week it turned to another kind of harm: the insult and stigma inflicted by diseases named for people, places, and animals. Among the existing monikers that its new guidelines "for the Naming of New Human Infectious Diseases" would discourage: Ebola, swine flu, Rift Valley Fever, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, and monkey pox. Instead, WHO says researchers, health officials, and journalists should use more neutral, generic terms, such as severe respiratory disease or novel neurologic syndrome.
Many scientists agree that disease names can be problematic, but they aren't sure the new rulebook is necessarily an improvement. "It will certainly lead to boring names and a lot of confusion," predicts Linfa Wang, an expert on emerging infectious diseases at the Australian Animal Health Laboratory in Geelong. "You should not take political correctness so far that in the end no one is able to distinguish these diseases," says Christian Drosten, a virologist at the University of Bonn, Germany.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Saturday December 12 2015, @08:39PM
How about naming the disease after the doctor that discovered it, like Thripshaw's Disease [youtube.com]?
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 12 2015, @09:44PM
In the summary, one of the examples of names the WHO dislikes is Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. They discourage the use of people's names.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Saturday December 12 2015, @09:52PM
Why?
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 12 2015, @09:57PM
Who cares