Re: [HAPS-L] Disease/Syndrome names

[Ken Saladin <ksaladin@xxxxxxxxxx>]

> It seems to me that
> lately there is a trend to drop the "'s", e.g. Alzheimer
> disease, Parkinson disease etc.  I have seen this in multiple
> sources, from lay articles to texts to websites.  Wikipedia lists it
> as Alzheimer's but also says "The term Alzheimer disease (without
> the apostrophe and s) also continues to be used commonly in the
> literature."  For Parkinson's disease, Wikipedia states
> "Parkinson's disease (also known as Parkinson disease or
> PD)..."


I think it's just a matter of habit and inertia.

The AMA Manual of Style, Stedman's Medical Dictionary, and other
authorities lately have recommended dropping the apostrophe-s, and that's
what I've been doing in my textbooks. I can remember some people finding
it offensive to call trisomy-21 Down's syndrome, and insist on Down
syndrome (especially parents of DS children). And yet no one seemed to
take offense at possessive eponyms such as Alzheimer's disease. I felt it
best simply to be consistent, fall into line with AMA and Stedman, and
drop the possessive form from all eponymous medical conditions and
structures. That seems to be the trend. The AMA Manual seems likely to
influence the medical journals and ultimately they will probably
influence the medical textbooks.

A related issue that often comes up is when to capitalize eponyms. Many
people tend to assume that any term derived from a person's name should
be capitalized, but the rule is that you capitalize only if the person's
name retains its original spelling, but use lowercase if the spelling is
derivative. Thus:  Golgi complex, crypts of Lieberkuhn, Wernicke
area, darwinian evolution, pacinian corpuscle, mendelian heredity. I've
lost count of how many times I've had to explain this to reviewers
gigging me for not capitalizing words like pacinian and
mendelian.

Ken