The World Health Organization has released a list of guidelines for naming diseases in the proper, politically correct way — because apparently insensitive names can have disastrous effects on entire economies and countries.
“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 advises. Apparently, WHO considers political correctness to be more important in a disease’s name than giving information about the disease. (For example, “swine flu” is called “swine flu” because it literally does come from swine.)
“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 the needless slaughtering of food animals,” said Dr. Keiji Fuduka, WHO’s assistant director-general for health security.
(So, if “swine flu” is a no-go because it is offensive to pigs, I guess that means that “chicken pox” would also be unacceptable because it’s offensive to chickens. Got it.)
#related#Although Fuduka insists that the wrong name “can have serious consequences for peoples’ [sic] lives and livelihoods,” not everyone considers this to be a huge issue.
“This won’t save lives. It comes under the heading of political correctness and I am very sceptical it will have any permanent benefit,” said Bacteriologist Professor Hugh Pennington, according to an article in The Daily Mail.
“As for avoiding upsetting animals, that is a load of rubbish,” he added.
— Katherine Timpf is a reporter for National Review.