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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 cmn32480 on Sunday December 13 2015, @03:55AM
And where, precisely, do you stick needles for "Weeping Anus"? Or is finding that out going to make me cringe?
"It's a dog eat dog world, and I'm wearing Milkbone underwear" - Norm Peterson
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Monday December 14 2015, @09:19PM
Oh, it was 20 years ago and I couldn't say any more. But the idea that something called "Weeping Anus" was self-treatable made me laugh and laugh at the time. Next to the name of the ailment the manual should have said, "Uh, dude. Go see the doctor about that. Really."
Washington DC delenda est.