What's in a Name (of a Disease)?

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/22/health/22dise.html?th&emc=th

Apparently, much more than the disease itself. Although I am not so sure it's a good thing to have a disease named after you, I am sure it's better than being named after a disease.

And I have not done any research on the issue, but I am sure we could find in the history of medical research and development plenty of instances in which what we know now was, in part, generated by nefarious activities of clinicians and scientists. Some of these were members of the Nazi party; some were American scientists and doctors.

The institution of medicine is not immune to the same racism and sexism that plagues society in general (no pun intended), and often this is seen in the "naming" of conditions, procedures, or remedies.

Even one of the most honorable of health-related issues is subject to this: pregnancy and childbirth.

The EDC, which so many confuse for "estimated date of conception," actually is the acronym for "Estimated Date of Confinement." In other words, that time at which the baby will likely be born and the mother will be "confined" to a hospital bed for a week. Now, we know that this rarely happens any longer, that most new mom's go home within a day or two of an uncomplicated birth. But the term persists.

With multiple miscarriages, a woman hopeful of bringing a fetus to term may be labeled an "habitual aborter"! And with each miscarriage, unless there is a known cause, the failure of a conceived pregnancy is said to be a "blighted ovum". In other words, it's the woman's fault, when in fact there is no reason to suspect the ova over the sperm. But a male-dominated medical institution would hardly want to point fingers at themselves and their kind.

What's in a name? A name. But a load of other things that may bother people.

I hold to my original statement, and I'm glad my name isn't Anna Plastic Tumor.