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The practice giving disease a bad name by Barnaby Feder in the Sydney Morning Herald.
The issue of naming rights is being debated in the medical community. Recently, Woywodt and Matteson argued in the British Medical Journal that not only should eponyms with connections to Nazi atrocities be abandoned immediately, eponyms should go altogether. In many cases they did not reflect true scientific discoveries, which were often a group effort over time. They also lacked scientific accuracy and were confusing and should be replaced by a more descriptive classification system.
If you're interested, the article cited was in the September 1, 2007 issue of the British Medical Journal, and should be available here. (It was marked as freely available - not all BMJ content is.)
One of the points they make:
"A common flaw is that eponyms usually refer to one person whereas scientific discoveries often reflect a group effort over time. Behçet's disease serves as an example ... To acknowledge everyone who discovered facets of the disorder, we would have to name it Hippocrates-Janin-Neumann-Reis-Bluthe-Gilbert-Planner-Remenovsky-Weve-Shigeta-Pils-Grütz-
Carol-Ruys-Samek-Fischer-Walter-Roman-Kumer-Adamantiades-Dascalopoulos-Matras-Whitwell-
Nishimura-Blobner-Weekers-Reginster-Knapp- Behçet's disease."
Martha Barnette
Grant Barrett
Grant Barrett
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