World Health Organization Has New Rules For Avoiding Offensive Names

sciencehabit writes: Last week The World Health Organization (WHO) decided to address not only the physical toll of disease but the stigma inflicted by diseases named for people, places, and animals as well. Among the existing names 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. The organization suggests researchers, health officials, and journalists should use more neutral, generic terms, such as severe respiratory disease or novel neurologic syndrome instead. “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.

Comments

Ebola

[danbob999]

I understand avian flu wasn't the best idea since people feared birds. But what's wrong with Ebola?

Re:Ebola

[netsavior]

Ebola gets its name from a River in the Republic of Congo, despite the fact that it was not discovered in or on that river.

Re:Ebola

[Tailhook]

The Ebola River for which the disease is named is sensitive and doesn't like having horrible diseases named after it.

The best policy is to simply not name these sort of things until they appear in a Western nation somewhere. The media could refer to Ebola, for instance, as the Unidentified Tropical Wasting Syndrome until a nurse in Texas catches it, at which point may be named the Dallas Hemorrhagic Fever, or DHF.

Far more equitable and highly unlikely to incur the wrath of WHO.

Re:Ebola

[WaffleMonster]

I understand avian flu wasn't the best idea since people feared birds. But what's wrong with Ebola?

They also end up fearing Ricola.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Re:Ebola

[arglebargle_xiv]

I understand avian flu wasn't the best idea since people feared birds. But what's wrong with Ebola?

Oh come on, how ridiculous is that! Next thing you know we won't be able to say "porch monkey" any more. My grandmother used to call me a porch monkey all the time when I was a kid because I'd sit on the porch and stare at my neighbours. She was just an old timer, that's the way people talked back then! Didn't mean they were racist... Although my grandmother did refer to a broken beer bottle once as a nigger knife... You know, come to think of it, my grandmother was kind of a racist.

Not for animals or locations

[gurps_npc]

Makes sense. You name a disease for a location and nobody wants to go there.

You name a disease for a creature and it's open season on that creature - and the destroys any business that uses them.

These things happen even if the location/creature is only tangentially related to the disease.

But there is no reason not to name a disease after the first patient/doctor that gets/discovers it.

Worst case scenario, they have to change their name.

Re:Not for animals or locations

[phantomfive]

Worst case scenario, they have to change their name.

And everyone else who has that name.........

Of course, the whole problem would be solved if we could rip people out of the dark ages and realize "swine flu" doesn't mean you should kill all the swine.....and "Hodgkins' disease" doesn't mean you should kill everyone named Hodgkins. Seriously, half the world still needs to grow up.

Re:Not for animals or locations

[TWX]

Admittedly I have the privilege of having grown up in the first world, but I can't think of any examples of when a disease named after its discoverer led to more than juvenile word games for those who happened to share a name or a similar sounding name to the disease.

Re:Not for animals or locations

[vux984]

Worst case scenario, they have to change their name.

That is a bit much too. Nobody wants to be 'Mr. & Mrs. Alzheimer' ... and asking whole family trees to change their name is no more onerous than renaming a river.

I propose drawing on fantasy and science fiction for memorable disease names. Nazgul-flesheating-disease, Tatooine-Fever, Targaryen-herpes...

Re:Not for animals or locations

[geekmux]

Makes sense. You name a disease for a location and nobody wants to go there.

Yes, because there has been no one living within 100 miles of the Ebola river since 1976. A clear case of cause and effect.

You name a disease for a creature and it's open season on that creature - and the destroys any business that uses them.

Wow. We should expect Chick-Fil-A to shut their doors minute now, along with a lot of farms. After all, how the hell can anyone expect to eat poultry after hearing the words "chicken pox". Oh the horror, look at the humans run away!

Oh wait, my mistake. Those humans were merely waddling out of the KFC restaurant. Clearly humanity is paranoid as they serve up another helping.

What's that? You mean they actually called it "swine flu" and yet bacon sales and cholesterol levels never changed?!? I'm shocked, shocked I tell you...

Perhaps you should reconsider this train of thought. It doesn't seem to follow reality. At all.

Re:Not for animals or locations

[phantomfive]

I believe the triggering incident here was swine flu, where pigs (owned mainly by christians, since muslims don't eat pork) were slaughtered because of fears of swine flu. Quote:

The Egyptian government began slaughtering pigs today as a preventative measure to stop the spread of the swine flu.... Over 300,000 pigs will be killed immediately despite no reported cases of the pandemic in the country.

Re:Not for animals or locations

[Dutch Gun]

You know what's going to happen of course, right? The official name will get completely ignored, and 99% of the world will know it by it's unique, catchy, culturally-insensitive and politically incorrect common name. Like it or not, someone will come up with a much catchier name for the disease in question, and the media will pick up on it, and it will unofficially be known by that name forevermore.

Language is hard to corral by rules, as anyone who rages against slang words being added to the dictionary well knows.

Re:Not for animals or locations

[Ol Olsoc]

Wow. We should expect Chick-Fil-A to shut their doors minute now, along with a lot of farms.

That offensive "Chick" reference has been cited as one of the causes of women avoiding STEM careers.

Re:Not for animals or locations

[Whiteox]

Way back when swine flu was rampant, the only pig in Afghanistan was quarantined. Evidently, the Afghans kept one as a curiosity in a zoo.
http://www.reuters.com/article...

Re:Not for animals or locations

[Whiteox]

Meh. Lyme disease is not recognized in Australia. Patients are treated for symptoms, often with incorrect medications.

Re:Not for animals or locations

[Whiteox]

Naaah.... the local housos here say 'Old Timer's' instead.
I need to lie down as I think I'm getting another episode of Gornophobia.

Re:Not for animals or locations

[nbauman]

Worst case scenario, they have to change their name.

That is a bit much too. Nobody wants to be 'Mr. & Mrs. Alzheimer' .

My high school science teacher told us that the worse the disease, the greater the honor it is to have your name on it.

If the Alzheimers don't want it named after them, there are loads of researchers who would be happy to have the honor.

I am proud to say that acinetobacter baumanii has a mortality of over 50% and is resistant to every major antibiotic.

Re:Not for animals or locations

[tepples]

We should expect Chick-Fil-A to shut their doors minute now [over] "chicken pox".

Every Chick-fil-A restaurant in the United States did shut its doors yesterday.

Re:Not for animals or locations

[Lehk228]

no we should not change how the whole world works on account of a bunch of barbaric muslims.

Re:Not for animals or locations

[Anubis IV]

Really, what it comes down to is marketing, I'm sad to say. After the Heartbleed bug was announced, a number of people took note of the fact that it wasn't even the biggest security hole in the last year, yet it received far and away the most publicity, largely because the researchers who found it waited to announce it until after they had come up with a catchy name and logo for the bug. Serious outbreaks deserve appropriate marketing to ensure that the public responds appropriately, and giving them good names is a major part of that.

I'm reminded of hurricanes and how the public viewed them in the US prior to the introduction of the modern naming convention, where they're named in alphabetical order using common names that alternate between male and female every other year. People used to not take hurricanes seriously and would routinely refuse to evacuate, resulting in a number of avoidable deaths, but as soon as they were given human names, people began anthropomorphizing the storms and treating them like something that's out to get them, which is a desirable and helpful response for the public to have when dealing with natural disasters...such as infectious outbreaks.

If we only ever heard about the H1N1 flu subtype, severe acute respiratory syndrome, and bovine spongiform encephalopathy, much of the public would be unaware of the threat that each could pose (fun exercise: do you, the reader, know what each of those is?). After all, they don't know how influenza subtypes are organized or which ones are of greater concern. And "severe" and "acute" are terms they know, but not in the context of medicine, other than that the ER doctors on TV usually use the word "stat" shortly after saying them. Hell, most of them don't know what "bovine" refers to, let alone "spongiform encephalopathy". But ask folks about the common names that those ailments go by, and a good number of them will indicate some level of familiarity.

Again, we want people to react to disease outbreaks, and giving them boring names is exactly the wrong thing to do if we want people to take the outbreak seriously so that we can keep the disease from spreading. It's desirable that people will be more careful to wash their hands after touching surfaces in public. It's desirable that we'll have a culture that frowns on people who don't cover their mouths when coughing. It's desirable that people will avoid large, public gatherings if there's an outbreak in their area. And giving them a name to latch onto is a great marketing tool that we need to be using appropriately. Giving them all names that are indistinguishable from one another is a great way to confuse, alienate, and reduce the awareness of the public when it comes to these issues.

Re:Not for animals or locations

[Anonymous Coward]

300,000 delicious pigs wasted along with the opportunity to name it the Kardashian Flu.

Re:Not for animals or locations

[ColdWetDog]

We should name the diseases after politicians. Preferably members of the US Congress. They want the recognition.

Kill two birds with one stone, so to speak.

Re:Not for animals or locations

[quenda]

Meh. Lyme disease is not recognized in Australia.

Lyme is not endemic here, same as malaria.
The problem is that for every genuine case of Lyme (e.g. returned tourists) there are a thousand self-diagnosed fools who saw a list of vague symptoms on the internet and think they have "chronic lyme". The symptoms are varied, and far from unique to Lyme. So doctors are understandably skeptical.
But if the patient has visited an endemic area, and symptoms match, testing is available, and appropriate antibiotics will be given. (Real testing, not the scam "lyme specialty" labs.)

Re:Not for animals or locations

[quenda]

Nobody wants to be 'Mr. & Mrs. Alzheimer' ...

Not so bad. At least nobody will forget your name then.

Re:Not for animals or locations

[hey!]

Why not give diseases numbers, and refer to emerging infections people who don't know by name using the number? You could have a system where each number prefix tells you more or less the family of diseases you're dealing with.

I know it sounds bizarre, but people seemed to be OK with H1N1 for "Swine Flu", so why not extend that to any kind of infectious (flu, malaria) or environmental (Minamata disease) etc.?

Re:Not for animals or locations

[FooAtWFU]

This may have also been a move to deal a blow to Coptic christians, a religious minority in the mostly-Islamic and pork-unfriendly region.

Re:Not for animals or locations

[I'm New Around Here]

Loss of control of head and/or neck movement: McConnellitis
Sudden loss of balance resulting in blindness: Reid Syndrome
Extreme aging of facial features (and other parts best unseen): pelosoriasis
Mental disorder of persecution complex: obamania
Bipolar condition of opposing beliefs every 4 to 6 years: McCainiac

Re:Not for animals or locations

[ganjadude]

what about hurricanes??? should we stop naming them after people???

Re:Not for animals or locations

[ganjadude]

so let me get this straight...

Because egypt is stupid enough to do this....we have to change the rules????

really????

REALLY??!?!??

Re:Not for animals or locations

[guises]

Fear of swine flu was not the reason, it was the excuse. I'm sure you're right about the event which inspired the rule though.

Re:Not for animals or locations

[StatureOfLiberty]

I'm wondering what the pharmaceutical marketing firms are going to do now.
All of the good made up names are going to be taken by diseases.
If this had happened a few years ago "I'm down with Crestor" could have had an entirely different meaning.

To me this all seems a bit too much. Some day we'll hear:
"We were going to name our child "Henry" but we didn't want everyone thinking of Henry the Eighth. So we named him "Frienworthy" instead. "Familient" and "Intellus" were others we considered.

"Moon Unit" would sound quaint by comparison.

Re:Not for animals or locations

[AmiMoJo]

Sometimes they want to rename diseases because of the association with a bad person. I have Reuter's, but he experimented on Jews during the war. Also, the new name, reactive arthritis, is much more descriptive and I don't have to immediately say I have arthritis afterwards. Even doctors tend not to know what it is unless they are specialists.

Re:Not for animals or locations

[LordLucless]

If we only ever heard about the H1N1 flu subtype, severe acute respiratory syndrome, and bovine spongiform encephalopathy, much of the public would be unaware of the threat that each could pose

What was the common name for severe acute respiratory syndrome? I only heard it as SARS, and people seemed to get worked up about that just as easily as they did about mad cow disease, or avian flu. There was a water contamination scare around here a few years ago, and cryptosporidium and giardia became household terms for quite a while.

I don't think it's so much the naming as it is the reporting around it. If the media repeats it enough, people will remember the term, even if it is outlandish. The main problem, I think, would be that there's probably dozens of diseases that cause "severe acute respiratory" problems. Naming diseases after prominent symptoms is likely to lead to lots of confusion, as many diseases have very similar symptoms.

Re:Not for animals or locations

[tsotha]

It even forms biofilms.

I'm jealous.

Re:Not for animals or locations

[aevan]

Agreed. I know I've no interest in visiting Spain.

Re:Not for animals or locations

[ArsenneLupin]

We should name the diseases after politicians. Preferably members of the US Congress. They want the recognition.

They already do, in a way. It seems that santorum is named after a politician...

Re:Not for animals or locations

[Bob the Super Hamste]

So what you are saying is that we should have "Politician flu", or "Media flu"

Re:Not for animals or locations

[Attila Dimedici]

I'm reminded of hurricanes and how the public viewed them in the US prior to the introduction of the modern naming convention, ...

Considering that naming hurricanes dates back to at least `1825 I think you are mistaken. More importantly, our current system dates back to just after World War II (although the naming convention has changed several times since then). Which means that the practice of naming hurricanes was instituted at the same time that we instituted a practice of tracking them so as to give advance warning and call for evacuation on anything other than a local scale. Basically, before we started naming hurricanes you were unlikely to know one was coming far enough in advance to make reasonable plans for evacuation. There are complicated reasons why people have changed how they react to evacuation warnings regarding hurricanes, but naming hurricanes plays an insignificant rile in that change.

Re:Not for animals or locations

[meta-monkey]

I don't think so. If you introduce it with a descriptive name and an initialism or acronym that rolls off the tongue people will adopt that name. Like AIDS. But yeah, you call it "monkey pox" and people freak out and start killing monkeys. You name it "St. Louis Disease" and people think they're at risk if they're in St. Louis.

It makes sense.

Re:Not for animals or locations

[nbauman]

Sometimes they want to rename diseases because of the association with a bad person. I have Reuter's, but he experimented on Jews during the war. Also, the new name, reactive arthritis, is much more descriptive and I don't have to immediately say I have arthritis afterwards. Even doctors tend not to know what it is unless they are specialists.

The problem is that all autoimmune diseases are reactive, and most of them involve arthritis.

As a compromise, it would have been better to hang Reiter at Nuremberg and keep his name on the disease.

Re:Not for animals or locations

[Anubis IV]

I'm reminded of hurricanes and how the public viewed them in the US prior to the introduction of the modern naming convention, ...

Considering that naming hurricanes dates back to at least `1825 I think you are mistaken. More importantly, our current system dates back to just after World War II (although the naming convention has changed several times since then).

A) You're missing the forest for the trees. Even if I'm mistaken, which I don't concede, it doesn't affect the point I was getting at. You'd remove one example, but I could have just as easily swapped in any number of others ones.

B) I was quite clearly referring to the public designations for storms in the US, so I don't know why you're mentioning 1825 at all, given that the only naming conventions around back then were either internal designations or were not in use in the US at all. The naming convention I was discussing didn't start to fall into place in the States until the 1950s. I'll agree with you that it went through some subsequent refinements, but that's beside the point.

C) Contrary to what you said, the US was both tracking and calling for widespread evacuations well before the introduction of the modern naming system. Just look at the two deadliest natural disasters in US history: the 1900 Galveston hurricane (~10,000 dead) and the 1928 Okeechobee hurricane (~2500 dead). In both cases, the storms were being reported on and tracked for over a week before they made landfall at their namesakes. And while warnings were limited in the case of the Galveston hurricane (there are some less-than-credible reports of meteorologists running up and down the Texas beach, trying to personally warn beachgoers to evacuate in the hours before the storm arrived because people weren't heeding the earlier warnings), by the time of the 1928 Okeechobee hurricane, they were able to post warnings in advance all the way from Miami to Jacksonville, covering the entire length of Florida. Those warnings were credited with saving thousands upon thousands of lives, but thousands more didn't heed the warnings and ended up dying in the storm.

Again, while I think I was right to use this example, whether I'm right or wrong really doesn't impact the greater point I was getting at, which is that proper marketing can greatly assist in getting the word out about a threat and in ensuring an appropriate public response. All too often, we dismiss things that shouldn't be dismissed, so framing them in such a way that we take them seriously can be a major benefit.

Re:Not for animals or locations

[Anubis IV]

"SARS" was what I was thinking of, but that's kinda the point. It was "SARS" to the public, not "severe acute respiratory syndrome", in much the same way that "HIV" and "AIDS" are terms that we treat with appropriate respect, while "human immunodeficiency virus" and "autoimmune deficiency syndrome" are generally unrecognized. The acronym became the name in each of those cases, at least as far as the public is concerned.

I think you are right that the reporting around it plays a large part in things, which ties back in with my assertion that it's about marketing, of which naming is merely one component. Outlandish terms are perfectly fine (e.g. the two you cited), as you said, since once they're reported enough, people remember them. The issue we both agree on is that if there are dozens of similar sounding diseases with boring names, the public will be confused, and that doesn't serve anyone.

Re:Not for animals or locations

[Anubis IV]

I just addressed some of your points in response to someone else over in this comment, so rather than reposting the same thoughts again, I'll point you over there.

As you said, and as I agree, there were some great improvements in weather forecasting around that time (e.g. the first weather satellites went up in the 1960s, which wasn't that far removed from when the names began being used publicly in the 1950s, and the satellites almost certainly had a greater impact in aiding the public's awareness of storm activity than the names did), but as I pointed out in that other post, official tracking of storms and accurate calls for evacuations had been around for decades prior to the introduction of the naming conventions I was discussing.

Re: Not for animals or locations

[Anubis IV]

Assuming you're referring to the "fun exercise" bit, yeah, in re-reading it, it was a rather prickish thing for me to say. Is any of the rest of it though? I'm always up for getting honest feedback on how well my intended tone gets conveyed in my writing.

Re:Not for animals or locations

[Baki]

Seriously, half the world still needs to grow up.

Indeed, but that is a fact of life, you'll never change that. The WHO proposal might be a way of dealing with that fact, but I doubt if its the best way.

Just think...

[Rick Zeman]

...of the poor stigmatized pigs!

Oh wait.

Ebola and E. coli

[tepples]

That and "Ebola" sounds like E. coli, causing people to confuse the two.

Re:Ebola and E. coli

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to mention the confusion with e-cola a pepsi knock off that causes you to bleed from your eyes

Re:Ebola and E. coli

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because people are dumb doesn't mean that we should rename everything.

Re:Ebola and E. coli

[ganjadude]

I thought people were confusing it with obama?

Re:Ebola and E. coli

[davester666]

No, that's regular pepsi.

Re:Ebola and E. coli

[Carewolf]

Not to mention the confusion with e-cola a pepsi knock off that causes you to bleed from your eyes

Isn't that the new green cola, coca-cola has released, which is sweatened with garden weeds?

Re:Ebola and E. coli

[bkcallahan]

Or confused with Ecola State Park.

Re:Ebola and E. coli

[RockDoctor]

That and "Ebola" sounds like E. coli, causing people to confuse the two.

Seriously?

Wow, the world is several points more stupid on average than I'd thought, and I'm still astonished that people are astonished that half of all people are of below average intelligence.

Chicken or egg syndrome

[Culture20]

Will this help, or will "acute respiratory syndrome" become the new offensive term?

Re:Chicken or egg syndrome

[I'm New Around Here]

Will this help, or will "acute respiratory syndrome" become the new offensive term?

I don't think I would mind a cute respiratory syndrome, .

Yeah. Check out the lungs on that syndrome.

Re:Chicken or egg syndrome

[cyberchondriac]

Probably. Words mean nothing but the meaning or stigma we attach to them. A century ago, mentally handicapped people were referred to as "idiots" "imbeciles", and "morons", and originally these were officially used terms which indicated a certain IQ range. After years of increasingly negative connotation and abuse, (the Three Stooges probably contributed to that) these terms because so derogatory that they were replaced with the milder, "mentally retarded", which was supposed to be the politically correct term of it's day, since retard simply means to slow. Of course that too was abused as a taunt and eventually was also seen as offensive, so now we have "handicapped" and "challenged".. which will eventually also become associated with the offensive, if not already. And so the process continues.

How about asking tech companies?

[ArcadeMan]

Intel, AMD and nVidia sure seem to know how to make up obscure and arcane names for their products, maybe the W.H.O. should ask them.

Disease #i23-DX4-R327-GTX543 has a nice ring to it.

Re:How about asking tech companies?

[ArcadeMan]

Here's another idea: how about the ISO8601 date + GPS coordinates where the disease is first found/confirmed?

Example: LA37.247091-LO115.812314-2015-05-11

Re:How about asking tech companies?

[ArcadeMan]

Doctor: I'm sorry to tell you but you have LA37.247091-LO115.812314-2015-05-11, there's no treatment.
Patient: But I've already been vaccinated for LA37.247081-LO115.812314-2015-05-11!

Re:How about asking tech companies?

[Archangel Michael]

Or Ebola for short ....

The problem isn't the naming convention. The problem is we are afraid of "connotations" in words. This is how "Retarded" became "Slow", became "Special" and so on until instead of ruining one word, we ruin a whole bunch trying to not "offend" anyone. We need to get over it.

Re:How about asking tech companies?

[nbauman]

Suggestions like this have gone nowhere in the past.

http://www.qfever.com/2002/11/...

“Confusing” Brand, Generic Drug Name System To Be Replaced
Full scientific nomenclature will soon be mandatory
November 1, 2002

WASHINGTON, DC--In an effort to decrease prescription errors, The American Pharmaceutical Association announced today that a new naming system will be enforced by pharmacies nationwide beginning in January.

Instead of the current system of brand and generic names, clinicians will be required to use full scientific nomenclature on all prescriptions, and are urged to use the new names when discussing medications with patients and with other providers.

"There's mounting evidence that having both a brand and a generic name causes a lot of unnecessary confusion," said APhA spokesman Noreen Marzette. "You get patients taking both Lasix and furosemide, not knowing they're the same thing."

"Now in the new system, they're on 4-chloro-N-furfuryl-5-sulfamoylanthranilic acid. It just doesn't get much more unambiguous than that."

According to the APhA, responses to the planned implementation have been mixed. At a trial implementation in Baltimore, MD, some patients were reportedly unable to obtain (3b, 5b, 12b)-3-[(O-2,6-dideoxy-b-D-ribo-hexopyranosyl-(1“4)-O-2,6-dideoxy-b-D-ribo-hexopyranosyl-(1“4)-2,6-dideoxy-b-D-ribo-hexopyranosyl)oxy]-12,14-dihydroxy-card-20(22)-enolide (formerly known as digoxin) when a computer glitch caused the third hexopyranosyl to be omitted.

Nevertheless, the new system will be universally adopted by pharmacies, hospitals, and medical centers throughout the nation in January 2003. Prescriptions not written in scientific notation after that time will be sent back to the prescribing clinician for revision.

Old New
Prozac (fluoxetine) (±)-N-methyl-3-phenyl-3-[(a,a,a-trifluoro-p-tolyl)-oxy]propylamine hydrochloride
Viagra (sildafenil) 1-[[3-(6,7-dihydro-1-methyl-7-oxo-3-propyl-1H-pyrazolo[4,3-d]pyrimidin-5-yl)-4-ethoxyphenyl]sulfonyl]-4-methylpiperazine citrate
Tagamet (cimetidine) guanidine, N''- cyano-N-methyl-N- [2-[[(5-methyl-1H-imidazol-4-yl)methyl]thio]-ethyl]-monohydrochloride
Valium (diazepam) 7-chloro-1,3-dihydro-1-methyl-5-phenyl-2H-1,4-benzodiazepin-2-one
Norvasc (amlodipine) (R.S.) 3-ethyl-5-methyl-2-(2-aminoethoxymethyl)-4-(2-chlorophenyl)-1,4-dihydro-6-methyl-3,5-pyridinedicarboxylate benzenesulphonate
Zithromax (azithro-mycin) (2R,3S,4R,5R,8R,10R,11R,12S,13S,14R)-13-[(2,6-dideoxy-3-C-methyl-3-O-methyl-a-L-ribo-hexopyranosyl)oxy]-2-ethyl-3,4,10-trihydroxy-3,5,6,8,10,12,14-heptamethyl-11-[[3,4,6-trideoxy-3-(dimethylamino)-b-D-xylo-hexopyranosyl]oxy]-1-oxa-6-azacyclopentadecan-15-one

Re:How about asking tech companies?

[ColdWetDog]

Give the task over to Microsoft's marketing group. They're pretty good at obscure and arcane, not to mention downright weird.

Bob
Zune
Vista
Plays for sure
Clippy
Me
CE
RT

etc.

WHO thought this was a good idea?

[penguinoid]

The organization suggests researchers, health officials, and journalists should use more neutral, generic terms, such as severe respiratory disease or novel neurologic syndrome instead. “It will certainly lead to boring names and a lot of confusion,” predicts Linfa Wang

WHO thought this was a good idea? It's all fun and games until someone confuses two different severe respiratory diseases, or a novel neurologic syndrome for an older neurologic syndrome.

Re:WHO thought this was a good idea?

[nbauman]

The organization suggests researchers, health officials, and journalists should use more neutral, generic terms, such as severe respiratory disease or novel neurologic syndrome instead. “It will certainly lead to boring names and a lot of confusion,” predicts Linfa Wang

WHO thought this was a good idea? It's all fun and games until someone confuses two different severe respiratory diseases, or a novel neurologic syndrome for an older neurologic syndrome.

It's really simple:

Neurologic syndrome

New neurologic syndrome

Newer neurologic syndrome

Even newer neurologic syndrome

Really new neurologic syndrome

Really new neurologic syndrome with strawberry rash

Re:WHO thought this was a good idea?

[Godwin O'Hitler]

Then of course they would almost immediately get abbreviated to SRD and NNS because nobody wants to waste time writing or pronouncing long names.
As if we don't already have more initialisms that the human mind can reasonably deal with.

they'll all sound like Star Wars Planets

[turkeydance]

my doctor said i've got Respira 6.

Re:they'll all sound like Star Wars Planets

[Irate Engineer]

Coruscant Geonosis can be treated with Bespin.

Re:they'll all sound like Star Wars Planets

[MrL0G1C]

You should be thankful WHO renamed that, it was dogshag flu before.

Houston we have a problem

[marcello_dl]

The problem is removal of responsibility, which puts everyone in their own fluffy bubble where they can't be hurt nor they can do anything.

You don't go to Spain because you heard about the Spanish flu? Your loss, and an advantage for those who use their brain.

I am not letting anybody dictate how I must express myself, how I must think. What I do can have social repercussions, what I think or what I say (most of the time) are not business of societies that proclaim themselves free.

First it's about national security, then religious sensitivity, then normal sensitivity, then whatever is deemed offensive for whatever reason, then the truth dies.

Politicians

[sjames]

We should name them after politicians and ambulance chasing lawyers. It can't possibly give them a worse reputation and the confusion may result in more funding for the eradication efforts.

Re:Politicians

[Krishnoid]

Or maybe after genocidal leaders/serial killers/mass murderers. It's not like their reputation would suffer much more.

Re: Politicians

[Anonymous Coward]

I've got the Hitler hemorrhagic fever, but I was vaccinated against the Mussolini mumps!

Re: Politicians

[Krishnoid]

Not sure if that's better or worse than coming down with Bieber fever.

Here's an idea

[ArcadeMan]

Don't name anything with the word Belg... oh, I almost said it right there.

This word has been known to start intergalactic wars.

Re:Here's an idea

[Baron_Yam]

Holy Zarquon singing fish, man. There's no need to use that kind of language.

Makes Sense

[NotFamous]

Pulomary Diseases:

• Respiratory Inflammation Disease
• Inflammatory Respiratory Disease
• Moderate Atypical Respiratory Syndrome
• Respiratory Distress Atypical Inflammatory Disease
• Global Atypical Inflammatory Respiratory Syndrome
• Recurrent Respiratory Distress Syndrome
• Pulmonary Respiratory Inflammation Syndrome

Re:Makes Sense

[Maxo-Texas]

I think adding a year and a letter should be innocuous. Or you could go with the N1,N2,N3 versioning.

Let's see with acronyms that would lead to

RID2015a
IRD2015a
MARS2015a,MARS2015b
RDAID2015a
GAIRS2015a
RRDS2015a
PRIS2015n1,PRIS2015n2

I take it "global" is more important to know that Respiratory in GAIRS?

Oh, sure, this is going to work...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I can see the case for avoiding overt offense just for giggles(Hey, let's call the downs babies 'mongoloids' just like the good old days!); but this WHO suggestion seems both excessively broad(eg. diseases named for people almost always honor discoverers or significant researchers, which is hardly stigmatizing; diseases named after locations, unless novel as all hell, tend to better known than their place of origin/discovery pretty quickly) and deeply futile(the veterinarians and epidemiologists of the world are suddenly going to stop making reference to animal vectors? Like hell.)

Plus, even brutally banal acronyms tend to find pejorative meanings that suit peoples' impressions of a disease pretty quickly. 'Severe acute respiratory syndrome' does its best to mean nothing; but people were still calling it 'severe asian respiratory syndrome' within days of its announcement. Plus, our supply of 'Novel Something Syndrome' form names is going to dry up real quick once the first one stops being novel and a second one shows up.

Some sort of systematic naming convention, ideally shorter than the causal organism's entire genetic code, would be nice; but informal naming is always kind of a mess and seems unlikely to change.

oh, i almost forgot from the last WHO post

[turkeydance]

Third Base!

I've got one!

[Ihlosi]

Generalized metabolic disorder. Formerly known as death.

Re:I've got one!

[Fire_Wraith]

You do? I'm so sorry to hear that - is it serious?

Re:I've got one!

[Ihlosi]

I got better.

The list can be self-conflicting

[mark-t]

Disease names may *NOT* include:... People's names

and...

Disease names may include...Causal pathogen and associated descriptors

What if the causal pathogen is named after somebody?

Political correctness

[Vinegar Joe]

Is a disease.

Re:Political correctness

[UnknownSoldier]

Agreed. Political Correctness = Political Censorship = Political Cowards.

With apologies to Futurama: I'm sorry Fry but drowning has been renamed acute case of over saturation of dihydrogen monoxide consumption. to stop this for once and for all. =P

Re:Political correctness

[LessThanObvious]

Sure, be we can't call it that anymore. We'll have to call it Obsessive Non-Offensive Disorder. A condition that be easily diagnosed by presenting the patient with a series of mildly racist or sexist jokes and observing their reaction. If the results are inconclusive, then work midget or retard into casual conversation and judge reaction level. It is important to ensure the test criterion should not cause direct personal offense to a category of which the patient is a member. Obsessive Non-Offensive Disorder is caused by hyper-sensitivity of empathy receptors or irrational self-righteousness. Scores are 1-5.

1= Laughs at everything and tells more offensive joke in return. Possible asshole, but not afflicted.
2= Laughs at 4 out of five with no negative reactions. patient not afflicted.
3= Laughs at at least 2 out of five and makes jovial comment like "Dude, that's wrong", patient normal.
4= Doesn't laugh at anything and body language suggests discomfort, or patient comments calmly that jokes are inappropriate. Patient suffers mild Obsessive Non-Offensive Disorder.
5= Patient does not laugh and threatens to sue, sends obnoxious self righteous Tweet, or subjects medical staff to unpleasant lecture. Patient suffers full blown Obsessive Non-Offensive Disorder.

Re:Political correctness

[AmiMoJo]

Except that's not what it is. Only idiots are saying it is political correctness, people who understand the issue realise that it isn't. Unfortunately, stupidity is a disease that is particularly hard to cure when chronic.

Which condition does patient #113-4551-92130 have?

[OrangeTide]

Is E afflicted with condition #8839669 or #8836996 ?

Oh well, the treatment for #8836996 is covered by Eirs medical plan, let's try that one first. Only alternative is to reevaluate patient #113-4551-92130, but that could take months and condition #8839669 is known to be fatal.

Dumb it down for the Muslims? Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe the triggering incident here was swine flu, where pigs (owned mainly by christians, since muslims don't eat pork) were slaughtered because of fears of swine flu

So Muslims once again are behaving like ignorant savages. And for that the rest of us should dumb down and obfuscate our language. No. They need to drag themselves out of the seventh century and grow up.

Easy fix

[c]

Name diseases after serial/mass killers and cults, with some consideration given to their body counts.

Re:Easy fix

[rizole]

Or...
...Chuck Norris, currently rampaging through Western Africa, has now been sighted in Europe, America and China with a major new outbreak occuring in Mexico city in the last 24 hours. Scientists are voicing concern on the difficulty of containing Chuck Norris and expect many more deaths in the coming months. Here's Bob with the details....

Re:Depends on your goals

[sexconker]

The goal isn't political correctness, it's ambiguity and confusion.
The WHO doesn't get enough action screaming about code red level 5 pandemics like swine flu, and doesn't have enough wiggle room to downplay massive fuckups.
So they want to change how diseases are named and classified so that they can further "control the message".
It's like when an software developer decides to rebrand itself as a cloud-based, web-scale, IT solutions vendor. The names mean nothing, you have no idea what you're getting or what it does, and it costs more.
Basically, the WHO wants disease as a service.

Re:Seriously?

[garyisabusyguy]

I think that you mean 'Global', but it's all the same for the people who are expecting UN helicopters to show up any moment

Re:Political correctness Disease

[McLae]

So, who gets to use the name 'PC Fever"?

How about "PC Syndrome".

Or the 'Politically Correct Disease"?

Best of all, "PC Syndrome". Which is why we are having this discussion.!

Names

[tquasar]

What a load of junk. Dear easily offended people:get a life.

Linfa Wang...

[HockeyPuck]

âoeIt will certainly lead to boring names and a lot of confusion,â predicts Linfa Wang, an expert on emerging infectious diseases at the Australian Animal Health Laboratory in Geelong.

Now that sounds like a bad disease.... I'd hate to tell my wife that I've been diagnosed with a Linfa Wang...

Re:Dumb it down for the Muslims? Really?

[nbauman]

I believe the triggering incident here was swine flu, where pigs (owned mainly by christians, since muslims don't eat pork) were slaughtered because of fears of swine flu

So Muslims once again are behaving like ignorant savages. And for that the rest of us should dumb down and obfuscate our language. No. They need to drag themselves out of the seventh century and grow up.

Pamela Geller derangement syndrome.

Very Rude

[pubwvj]

This is very rude. Diseases should be name after the molecular weight numbers of the causal agents.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Magoo" said the doctor, "but you've come down with 1291-12-121-124132-1212-121-9342-12. If you have any questions just Wiki that for details."

WHO has authority over linguistics?

[Trachman]

In Russian Chui means common curse word, basically "d*ck". In Chinese that is a just a name.

So what is it? We have WHO telling not to use certain words? What exactly will it change? Will russkies stop cursing, or Chinese will stop using one of their common last names?

can't we just name them after things we all agree

[treeves]

For example, Kanye West Fever, or Donald Trump Syndrome?

Re:Which condition does patient #113-4551-92130 ha

[Pfhorrest]

"Eir", not "eirs". You wouldn't say "covered by theirs medical plan", and Spivak pronouns are almost entirely just singular "they" pronouns with the "th" dropped.

Avoid the following names

[Lips]

Arheddis Varkenjaab and Aywellbe Fayed
Arhevbin Fayed and Bybeiev Rhibodie
Aynayda Pizaqvick and Malexa Kröest
Awul Dasfilshabeda and Nowaynayda Zheet
Makollig Jezvahted and Levdaroum DeBahzted
Steelaygot Maowenbach and Tuka Piziniztee

http://www.ietto.net/airport.h...

Linfa Wang

[Anonymous Coward]

> “It will certainly lead to boring names and a lot of confusion,” predicts Linfa Wang

Aw, now we'll never hear about someone being infected with Wang Fever or the like ....

Re:Let the Animals Be Heard!

[PPH]

Every time I talk to a pig,

Just hand him your license and registration and shut up.

Re:can't we just name them after things we all agr

[tomhath]

I don't want to be reminded of either of them.

Re:Which condition does patient #113-4551-92130 ha

[OrangeTide]

It's my dystopian fantasy, I get to make the rules.

Because clearly...

[Stormy Dragon]

The organization suggests researchers, health officials, and journalists should use more neutral, generic terms, such as severe respiratory disease or novel neurologic syndrome instead.

...there will only ever be one severe respiratory disease, so there's no risk of negative medical outcomes from a patient getting incorrect treatments when doctors confuse one for another.

Re:Republican fever

[slew]

Ebola gets its name from a River in the Republic of Congo

Well it could have been far given a far more offensive then. Imagine if they had called it Republican fever.

Well, since the country is actually officially the Democratic Republic of the Congo, I guess your suggestion isn't as offensive as it could have been ;^)

Re:Well, some agree

[slew]

I'm sure the makers of the diet aid product AYDS wish that were the case 30 years ago.

Perhaps they wish it would have been still called by its original name: GRID
(I'm guessing that both identifiers would comply with this new WHO guideline, but one is certainly more politically correct than the other)

How would you name it?

[penguinoid]

I do believe I've discovered a disease with the following symptoms:
1) a breakdown of linguistic ability, resulting in a fundamental change from clear concise words intended to convey meaning, to meaningless grunts which confer little or no meaning.
2) randomly taking offense at clear communication
3) decreased capability for higher brain functions (this may indicate susceptibility rather than being a symptom -- studies are inconclusive, not helped by the fact the infected oppose many studies of brain function). For example, certain sounds send them into an uncontrollable rage which their amygdalas are incapable of suppressing.
4) the most dangerous symptom, it appears the infected try to infect others; generally the infected join in large numbers to seek out uninfected brains, primarily using their mouths to spread the disease
5) the earliest symptoms frequently occur soon after a person first experiences the infected's bite, and is self-censorship in an attempt to avoid the sounds which set off the infected's uncontrollable rage. As the disease progresses, the victim inevitably turns on his friends in an attempt to infect them.

On second thought, this disease might terrify others if it were named descriptively. Perhaps it would be better to give it some pleasant-sounding, inoffensive, politically correct name.

Numbers

[manu0601]

Let them use code numbers, they cannot be offensive: sorry, but you have caught a 23-19

The results are in...

[mishehu]

...you are HIV Alladeen...

Re:Dumb it down for the Muslims? Really?

[I'm New Around Here]

Do you have contempt for Charlie Hebdo as well?

The paper pusher's disease

[mbeckman]

It seems the WHO is Patient Zero for a new malady, the Bureaucratic Busy-Body Butinsky Syndrome. Which I hereby christen "Whobola".

Political Correctness

[Dog-Cow]

What about renaming political correctness disease to something less offensive, or at least more accurate?

Re:Dumb it down for the Muslims? Really?

[ganjadude]

stop victim blaming. when the right does it, its a problem. when the left does it....crickets?

64 digits from a password gener Re:Not for animals

[mrmeval]

Hello Mr. Meval you've contracted a bad case of Q9fPfmk2roBWZuQqjeCFf2xfInOWtzMeuXvyVP8PtSeq6sgDU60kkLY6bQ13MT4k and we will have to use antibiotic R1rMzq5rM6 for at least six weeks. Please make your check payable to the l18O5pQQDAQDAXAesU56 medical clinic of Medina

why not...

[admiral snackbar]

name the diseases after fictional characters? Name diseases after Palpatine, Cartman, Wile E. Coyote etc. etc. Instantly recognizeable, no feelings get hurt. And personally I vote to rename Ebola to Nurgle's disease!

New headline

[MitchDev]

World Health Organization total bunch of idiots!

Bad words

[cwsumner]

Using "good" words instead of "bad" words just causes the innocent good words to -become- bad. Look up "euphemism" !
Many modern bad words -are- the good words of a few years ago. Look up what they used before those. And consider the word "Special" as a pejorative.

On the other hand, there is no need to be rude if you can avoid it...