Popular disease names like “swine flu” and “Spanish Flu” are too “stigmatizing,” according to the World Health Organization, and in the future all disease names should be carefully designed not to offend any cultures, regions, or animals.
Last week, WHO released its new “best practices” for disease-naming, which it wants “scientists, national authorities and the media” to follow. The guidelines are designed to avoid “stigmatizing certain communities or economic sectors.”
Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, for example, could be offensive to people from, well, the Middle East–where it originated.
“Terms that should be avoided in disease names include geographic locations (e.g. Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, Spanish Flu, Rift Valley fever), people’s names (e.g. Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, Chagas disease), species of animal or food (e.g. swine flu, bird flu, monkey pox), cultural, population, industry or occupational references (e.g. legionnaires), and terms that incite undue fear (e.g. unknown, fatal, epidemic),” the report reads.
While they’re not calling to change the “stigmatizing” names that are already established, they want future names or names for diseases that aren’t already well-known to follow these guidelines.
“We’ve seen certain disease names provoke a backlash against members of particular religious or ethnic communities, create unjustified barriers to travel, commerce and trade, and trigger needless slaughtering of food animals,” said WHO assistant director general Dr. Keiji Fukuda.
In an interview with NPR, Fukuda explained that the term “swine flu” is problematic because “in Egypt, in essence, all of the pigs were killed because they thought that was the cause of the disease.”
Of course, as National Review noted, swine flu does in fact come from swine.
Meanwhile, despite the name “chicken pox,” few Americans operate under the delusion that avoiding chickens will save them–suggesting that perhaps the WHO should focus on disease education rather than quarreling about colloquialisms.
Bacteriologist Professor Hugh Pennington, who has chaired several investigations into outbreaks of E.coli, told the Daily Mail, “This won’t save lives. It comes under the heading of political correctness and I am very sceptical it will have any permanent benefit.”
