世界衛(wèi)生組織近日公布命名新發(fā)現(xiàn)的人類(lèi)疾病的指導(dǎo)原則。根據(jù)這項(xiàng)原則，新發(fā)現(xiàn)的疾病將不再允許以人物、地點(diǎn)、動(dòng)物、食物和職業(yè)等命名，必須以更為中性的詞匯代替。

許多熟知的疾病都是以人名、地名、動(dòng)物名等來(lái)命名，例如近期令人聞之色變的埃博拉出血熱就是以非洲剛果民主共和國(guó)的埃博拉河來(lái)命名。這樣的命名方式簡(jiǎn)便且易于記憶，然而往往也會(huì)造成不必要的恐慌或者歧視。例如近期發(fā)現(xiàn)的一種由冠狀病毒引發(fā)的呼吸道疾病被冠以” 中東呼吸綜合癥”的名稱(chēng)，這讓一些阿拉伯國(guó)家頗為不快。為了避免這些問(wèn)題，世界衛(wèi)生組織要求各國(guó)研究人員和相關(guān)政府機(jī)構(gòu)今后命名新發(fā)現(xiàn)的人類(lèi)疾病時(shí)避免使用人名、地名、動(dòng)物名、職業(yè)名、種族名等，代之以更為中性的名稱(chēng)，例如”呼吸道疾病“等。世界衛(wèi)生組織同時(shí)建議命名時(shí)應(yīng)避免使用”未知“、”致死性“等容易造成恐慌的詞匯。

參與起草這項(xiàng)命名規(guī)則的一位世界衛(wèi)生組織高級(jí)官員稱(chēng)，專(zhuān)家們?cè)谄鸩葸^(guò)程中曾經(jīng)考慮過(guò)其他的方案，例如用希臘神話(huà)中的人物命名疾病，或者像命名颶風(fēng)那樣使用西方國(guó)家的常見(jiàn)姓名，最后還是因?yàn)閾?dān)心這些命名方式帶來(lái)的不必要的負(fù)面影響而放棄。許多研究人員雖然承認(rèn)現(xiàn)有命名方式的弊端，但對(duì)新的命名規(guī)則帶來(lái)的改進(jìn)持懷疑態(tài)度。他們認(rèn)為新的命名規(guī)則會(huì)使得疾病名稱(chēng)變得冗長(zhǎng)而難以記憶。但也有一些研究人員認(rèn)為，新的命名規(guī)則雖然施加了很多限制，但仍留下一定的自由發(fā)揮的空間，例如或許可以用數(shù)字命名新發(fā)現(xiàn)的疾病。



The World Health Organization (WHO) mostly works to reduce the physical toll of disease. But last week it turned to another kind of harm: the insult and stigma inflicted by diseases named for people, places, and animals. Among the existing monikers 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. Instead, WHO says researchers, health officials, and journalists should use more neutral, generic terms, such as severe respiratory disease or novel neurologic syndrome.

Many scientists agree that disease names can be problematic, but they aren’t sure the new rulebook is necessarily an improvement. “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.

Naming diseases has long been a fraught process. Badly chosen names can stigmatize people, as did gay-related immune deficiency, an early name for AIDS. They can also lead to confusion and hurt tourism and trade. The so-called swine flu, for instance, is not transmitted by pigs, but some countries still banned pork imports or slaughtered pigs after a 2009 outbreak. More recently, some Arab countries were unhappy that a new disease caused by a coronavirus was dubbed Middle East respiratory syndrome.

Although “it’s usually scientists who come up with these names … the WHO gets the diplomatic pressure” if someone takes offense, Drosten says. The new guidelines, released 8 May, aim to smooth the process. “The WHO had to do something to take itself out of the firing line,” Drosten says.

Given that news of a new pathogen often spreads quickly, “it is important that an appropriate disease name is assigned by those who first report” the disease, WHO's guidance notes. Following the guidelines, it adds, could “minimize unnecessary negative impact of disease names on trade, travel, tourism or animal welfare, and avoid causing offence to any cultural, social, national, regional, professional or ethnic groups.”

To that end, new disease names should not include geographic locations; the names of people, occupations, animals, or food; or “terms that incite undue fear” (such as unknown, fatal, and epidemic). Instead, the names should use generic descriptions of symptoms (respiratory disease or watery diarrhea) and specific terms describing patients, epidemiology or the environment (juvenile, maternal, seasonal, summer, coastal), as well as pathogen names and arbitrary identifiers (alpha, beta, 1, 2, 3).

The group that came up with these recommendations met “more than a few times” over the course of a year, says Kazuaki Miyagishima, director for food safety, zoonoses, and foodborne diseases at WHO, and a member of the panel. Among the ideas they discussed: naming diseases after Greek gods, using a system similar to the one used to name comets or alternating male and female names as is done with hurricanes.”But while naming a hurricane Katrina may not offend people, if we do it for a disease, it’s not just a hurricane for 1 week. It will make its way into the history of human suffering," Miyagishima says.

The guide is well intentioned, but goes too far, says Ian Lipkin, a virologist at Columbia University. “I don’t see how it will be helpful to eliminate names like monkey pox that provide insights into natural hosts and potential sources of infection,” he says.

It could also become harder to easily distinguish diseases. For instance, under the new rules, Marburg disease (named after a city in Germany) might have been called filovirus-associated haemorrhagic fever 1, while Ebola (named after a river) might have been filovirus-associated haemorrhagic fever 2. Such bland names “lose something that is more than just quaint,” says Howard Markel, a medical historian at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Drosten adds that geographic names are sometimes justified. It was clear that MERS, for example, was associated with the Middle East. “Would it have been better if we had named it novel betacoronavirus clade C, type 1?” he asks.

The new rules make for more difficult names, Miyagishima admits. “But we think we have left a fairly large area for freedom. We do not want to kill the creativity of researchers completely.”

Linfa Wang knows all about the difficulty of naming diseases. Two decades ago, he named a virus and the disease it causes after Hendra, a suburb of Brisbane, Australia; he still gets angry calls from residents complaining that the name has hurt property values. These days his strategy is to “go small.” Recently, he named a new henipavirus isolated in a neighborhood called Cedar Grove simply Cedar virus.

Virologists encountered other sensitivities with Norwalk virus, named for a city in Ohio. The pathogen is the only species in the genus Norovirus and usually that name is used. In 2011, however, a Japanese individual asked for a change because many people in Japan carry the surname Noro. The International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses recommended using "Norwalk virus” instead.

Acronyms are another good solution, says Ab Osterhaus, a virologist at Erasmus MC in Rotterdam, because they keep names short (another WHO recommendation) and people often forget what the letters stand for. But even acronyms can cause controversy. In 2003, WHO officials coined SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) to describe a novel pneumonia spreading in Asia, partly to avoid a name like “Chinese flu.” SARS did not go down well in Hong Kong, however, which is officially known as Hong Kong SAR, for special administrative region.

Giving new diseases a number may be the only way to avoid such issues, researchers say. There is precedent. Growing up in China in the late 1960s, Wang remembers that diseases had digits. “I was really scared of number 5 disease,” he recalls. “I don’t know why, you just really did not want to get disease number 5.”