世界衛生組織近日公布命名新發現的人類疾病的指導原則。根據這項原則，新發現的疾病將不再允許以人物、地點、動物、食物和職業等命名，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、動物名等來命名，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的埃博拉河來命名。這樣的命名方式簡便且易于記憶，然而往往也會造成不必要的恐慌或者歧視。例如近期發現的一種由冠狀病毒引發的呼吸道疾病被冠以” 中東呼吸綜合癥”的名稱，這讓一些阿拉伯國家頗為不快。為了避免這些問題，世界衛生組織要求各國研究人員和相關政府機構今后命名新發現的人類疾病時避免使用人名、地名、動物名、職業名、種族名等，代之以更為中性的名稱，例如”呼吸道疾病“等。世界衛生組織同時建議命名時應避免使用”未知“、”致死性“等容易造成恐慌的詞匯。

參與起草這項命名規則的一位世界衛生組織高級官員稱，專家們在起草過程中曾經考慮過其他的方案，例如用希臘神話中的人物命名疾病，或者像命名颶風那樣使用西方國家的常見姓名，最后還是因為擔心這些命名方式帶來的不必要的負面影響而放棄。許多研究人員雖然承認現有命名方式的弊端，但對新的命名規則帶來的改進持懷疑態度。他們認為新的命名規則會使得疾病名稱變得冗長而難以記憶。但也有一些研究人員認為，新的命名規則雖然施加了很多限制，但仍留下一定的自由發揮的空間，例如或許可以用數字命名新發現的疾病。



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.”