Pokemon Gene Renamed Under Legal Threat

Gamasutra reports that the 'Pokemon' cancer-causing gene has been renamed after legal threats were made by Pokemon USA. From the article: "Scientific journal Nature reported that Pokémon USA, the subsidiary company of Nintendo established to control the Pokémon brand in America, threatened to sue the cancer research center on the understandable grounds that equating Pokémon with cancer was doing harm to the brand's image. Sloan-Kettering acquiesced to the company's demands and changed the gene's name to the more unobtrusive Zbtb7."

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photosensitive epilepsy

[b1t r0t]

However, further recent warnings on these Pokemon-related health problems have been tempered by the fact that Southern Medical Journal researchers discovered only a small fraction of the children treated were actually diagnosed with photosensitive epilepsy.

Well, duuuuuuh. In the original case in Japan, after watching the Porygon episode, schoolkids were basically told "if you felt sick after watching that episode last night, you can go home right now." If you were a schoolkid, in Japan or elsewhere, what would you do? It doesn't take a Bart Simpson to jump at the chance to play hooky and get away with it.