GA Resolution: Disease Naming Compact

[Lenlyvit]

Disease Naming Compact

A resolution to modify universal standards of healthcare.

Category: Health

Area of Effect: Bioethics

Proposed by: Tinhampton

Noting that both novel and recurring communicable diseases affect a diverse array of species in many member states, and that names for these diseases (as well as their vectors) can offer consistency and clarity whenever used,

Dismayed that there is no international consensus on the naming of novel communicable diseases, in particular those which could cross borders, and thus no single reference point for them; so imperiling the safety of those infected and the sanity of doctors who have to slug through pages of bureaucracy simply to find out what is to be treated, and

Committing to confidently cut down the currently cumbersome, copious compilations of confusing classifications which can crop up continually in the catalogue of communicable conditions...

The General Assembly hereby:

a. creates, within the Epidemic and Pandemic Alert and Response Center (EPARC) of the World Health Authority, an Agency for the Branding of Communicable Diseases (ABCD),

b. tasks ABCD with proposing in short order to EPARC's Medical Ethics Board names for those communicable diseases with no suitable name in common use, which have not previously been detected in sapient species and are likely to lead EPARC to confirm an international outbreak; and publicising those names once speedily confirmed by that Board to be appropriately informative,

c. requires member states and healthcare organisations to use ABCD-publicised names for particular diseases when communicating about them to the public (but encourages other entities to use such names as intended); and to refrain from funding internal attempts to name such diseases where ABCD can do so efficiently, speedily, and on an international scale, and

d. clarifies that this resolution does not affect the naming or taxonomy (such as binomial nomenclature) of disease vectors.

This is the discussion thread. To cast your vote, go HERE

[Eist]

Whenever I see shit like this, I just wonder if the author would be so keen if the Standard was in Chinese script and you had to communicate it in Mandarin. Or Icelandic, or some obscure central African language that uses click consonants.

If this was limited to epidemiology, then fine. Physicians are scientists at their core and science needs to be consistent. But requiring nations to follow this when communicating about diseases to the public makes no sense when there are myriad languages out there.

Also, it's not clear if there is a Standard in place, and whatever scripts/languages can translate them to their own users. If this is the case, you are opening yourself up to a (literal) world of problems since languages are often not directly translatable. If you have a system in place, it will get messy with translating very quickly. Hell, some languages don't even use base 10. It's not possible to set up a systematic scientific protocol that is translated to groups of languages that use systems like this: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Aboriginal_enumeration

Voting AGAINST

[Jabberwocky]

Well said. Against.

[Dorab]

I would be for this is it didn't foce nations to use the name, but then it wouldn't be a GA proposal.

[Deleted]

I don't see a problem with this. It gets everyone on the same page in what to call a virus in situations like the current irl. I don't see an issue with nations using a loan-word to describe a certain virus, and there's nothing preventing the use of numeric elements in nomenclature, since that language is universal.

THX votes for.