Yet More PC Idiocy...

[Lord Jim]

They are supposed to be at the forefront of fighting disease and saving lives all over the world.

But in an astonishing example of political correctness, World Health Organisation officials have called for terms such as swine flu, bird flu and monkey pox to be banned – in order to protect animals from needless slaughter.

Other conditions – including German measles and Spanish flu – will also be outlawed because they might upset people from those countries.

Last night experts said the proposal would turn the Geneva-based WHO into an international laughing stock. The organisation was recently criticised for its failure to react quickly to the ebola outbreak in West Africa.

WHO – a UN body to which Britain contributes £35 million a year – says the aim of the new guidelines is to minimise the ‘negative impact’ of such terms as German measles or Lyme disease on travel, tourism or animal welfare.

It also wants to avoid offending ‘cultural, social, national, regional, professional or ethnic groups’.

But bacteriologist Professor Hugh Pennington, who chaired inquiries into E.coli outbreaks in Scotland and South Wales, said: ‘This won’t save lives. It comes under the heading of political correctness and I am very sceptical it will have any permanent benefit. As for avoiding upsetting animals, that is a load of rubbish.

‘The World Health Organisation is a political organisation – an arm of the UN – which got badly burned by not acting fast enough on ebola. Well-known diseases have to be called something and changing names causes public confusion and might even be harmful.’ [Ya think?]If governments and doctors around the world follow WHO advice, familiar terms such as Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, swine flu, legionnaire’s disease and paralytic shellfish poisoning will be dropped and replaced by names judged more politically correct.

The guidelines also call for the words ‘unknown’, ‘death’, ‘fatal’ and ‘epidemic’ to be avoided in descriptions of human disease because they can ‘incite undue fear’.

Geographic locations will be sidelined to protect the feelings of people living in those regions, spelling the end of Middle East respiratory syndrome, Rift Valley fever and Japanese encephalitis.

Swine flu will also be dumped because the designation led to the unnecessary culling of pigs which had no connection with the 2009 pandemic, according to a WHO spokesman. Virologist and bird flu expert Professor John Oxford said: ‘This document is laudable in its intent but slightly daft. There is a danger the WHO will be seen as a laughing stock.’

However, the three-page paper on ‘best practice’ was strongly defended by WHO assistant director-general Keiji Fukuda.

He said certain disease names had created a backlash against members of particular religious or ethnic communities and had erected barriers to travel and trade, as well as sometimes triggering the needless slaughtering of animals. The WHO was founded in 1948 with the aim of protecting populations around the globe from the scourge of infectious disease. Spokesman Dr Margaret Harris said: ‘We want to get away from emotive and stigmatising terminology.’[Yeah, that's what we need a World Health Organization for...]

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z3Zjti8pOl
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[wesw]

translation: you people are too stupid to handle the truth. don t worry your little heads about it. we are smart. leave it to us...

[Guinevere]

The way the two of you sneer at education and intelligence, why don't you head off to the planet of the dumb, and see how well life there is going.

[Lord Jim]

LMAO

Yeah, "intelligence"...

That's what's behind this alright...

[MajGenl.Meade]

WHO to rename other diseases:

Ebola - offensive to cricket playing nations and people wearing white socks in N E Ohio

Crohn's - unkind to old women

Smallpox - offensive to the vertically challenged

Dysentery - offensive to UK radio personalities Diz and Terry

Herpes - upsets incontinent women

Cholera - dismissive of police

Chagas - offensive to the Welsh

(OK, that's enough diseases. Ed)

[Joe Guy]

The cited article is just a wee bit exaggerated. In fact, I'm surprised it didn't come from Faux News.

The WHO hasn't banned or outlawed any of the existing terms for diseases. They have only instituted a new 'best practices' policy for naming new diseases.

Link to WHO document.

[Lord Jim]

Here's a link to the statement that was issued along with the document:

http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/not ... seases/en/

[Guinevere]

The information provided in Joe's link makes perfect sense to me. But hey, lets stay on the planet of the dumb and beat our chests about "PC-ness" instead . . .

[rubato]

Well put.


yrs,
rubato

[wesw]

guin, doesn t the idea of people suggesting, ordering, or coercing other people to use or not use certain words, or even to think in certain ways, bother you at all?

[oldr_n_wsr]

Like the Fort Hood shootings was "workplace violence".

[Lord Jim]

Well put.


yrs,
rubato

Wow, I sure hope I never see that as a follow-up to one of my posts...

[MajGenl.Meade]

guin, doesn t the idea of people suggesting, ordering, or coercing other people to use or not use certain words, or even to think in certain ways, bother you at all?

It's fun to mock the week but really... so the US Weather Service shouldn't have instructed that hurricanes be given alternate masculine/feminine names? The voluntary organization known as World Health cannot likewise suggest to the international community of science, part of the er... World Health Organization, that in naming new diseases it is better to avoid certain terms?

And by the way, no one in the entire history of the universe ever has, currently does or ever will think that "Give me liberty or give me death" is hate speech.

[Joe Guy]

... so the US Weather Service shouldn't have instructed that hurricanes be given alternate masculine/feminine names?

I demand that people's names should not be designated as masculine or feminine. If a man wants to have the name Gertrude or a woman wants to be called Dick, anyone who ridicules them for it should be held legally liable.

It's sexist.

[Crackpot]

Ok Gert

[Big RR]

Look, I'm as much a critic of silly PC rules as anyone, but I think this makes sense here. Indeed, it seems like the WHO wants to use more descriptive and informative names of diseases for those which are discovered in the future. I would think calling something by a descriptive names makes a lot more sense than the unscientific "monkey pox" or "asian flu", and it if saves a few animals' lives or encourages reporting (how many countries avoid reporting a newly discovered flu strain for fear of it being linked with them?).

Years ago, a chemists' association, IUPAC, set forth a systematic naming system for organic compounds and discouraged the usage of older, often less descriptive, names. Would that too be PC because we removed the female name "ethyl" from ethyl alcohol, replacing it with ethanol?

In the instant case, the point is, IMHO, to communicate as much information as possible and to encourage reporting of new diseases ASAP. Hardly anything PC in that.

[rubato]

guin, doesn t the idea of people suggesting, ordering, or coercing other people to use or not use certain words, or even to think in certain ways, bother you at all?

They were suggesting but not ordering nor coercing.

The terms are not equivalent.


yrs,
rubato

[rubato]

The Spanish flu got that name because of wartime censorship.


For anyone who cares, and you may or not as it pleases you, it is a bit unfair to associate it with Spain when it was not the origin, a significant transit point, nor did they have more casualties than many others:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1918_flu_pandemic
"...In August 1918, a more virulent strain appeared simultaneously in Brest, France, in Freetown, Sierra Leone, and in the U.S. in Boston, Massachusetts. The Allies of World War I came to call it the Spanish flu, primarily because the pandemic received greater press attention after it moved from France to Spain in November 1918. Spain was not involved in the war and had not imposed wartime censorship.[31] ... "



yrs,
rubato

[wesw]

mock the week? I ll do you one better....

February sucks. it a frigid bitch of a month....

[wesw]

"hey tom, what was it you were sick with?"

"oh, it was the H2N1G6EU flu...."