There is a longstanding tradition in the medical world of naming diseases and conditions after individuals who made valuable contributions to their discovery.
But who gets to be an eponym, who gets forgotten and should they be used at all?
In a perspective published in the Medical Journal of Australia, Dr Leya Nedumannil and Dr Diana Lewis of Northern Hospital, Melbourne question the continued use of the naming style.
“While not with the purpose to discredit the diligence of nor imply that unethical intentions always drove those after whom eponyms are coined, we believe their ongoing use in medicine without reflective deliberation may be detrimental,” the authors wrote.
The academics say that in some cases the broader teams who were involved in medical discoveries don’t get the same recognition as the person with the eponym.
An example of this is seen with Crohn’s disease, which is named after Burril B Crohn despite two other authors co-writing the paper where the condition was first described — Leon Ginzberg and Gordon D Oppenheimer.
“Medical progress is seldom a solo feat, and the use of eponyms may threaten important values of collaboration and collegiality in this realm,” Dr Nedumannil and Dr Lewis wrote.
Women throughout history have also been excluded with only 4% of medical eponyms being credited to women.
“Numerous women have historically had their scientific achievements forgotten or inaccurately credited to men, a notion of systemic bias so widespread that it has ironically acquired an evocative eponymous title itself [the Matilda Effect], named after suffragist Matilda Gage,” the authors wrote.
When names are best left in the past
Another unintended consequence of using medical eponyms occurs when an individual is found to have engaged in unethical research or even crimes against humanity, as in the case of research undertaken by Nazi collaborators.
“An example is the replacement of Wegener granulomatosis with granulomatosis with polyangiitis, due to Friedrich Wegener’s associations with the Nazi Party,” the authors wrote.
There is also a risk of medical eponyms continuing a culture of colonialism through favouring Eurocentric researchers over knowledge from other nations and cultures.
Research shows that 97% of medical eponyms celebrate European and North American physicians, despite 40% of pharmacological agents used in current practice originating from non-western medicine.
“The failure to acknowledge accomplishments of cultural medical practices that often pre-dated and potentially inspired those of conventional medicine is not uncommon, and some eponyms may reflect this,” the authors wrote.
A diagnosis by any other name…
Even from a merely logistical standpoint, eponyms can cause confusion due to multiple systems or conditions being named after the same person, and because eponyms are not descriptive of the condition, this can make it difficult to communicate with patients.
Both Dr Nedumannil and Dr Lewis argue that moving away from the use of medical eponyms would help medical terms avoid ethical pitfalls, while creating opportunities for more easily understandable terminology.
“This could not only help dissociate medical terminology from the contentious milieu in which several eponyms came to existence, but potentially also facilitate more precise communication between clinicians and with patients,” they concluded.
Read the perspective in the Medical Journal of Australia.
The Medical Journal of Australia is a publication of the Australian Medical Association.
The statements or opinions that are expressed in the MJA reflect the views of the authors and do not represent the official policy of the AMA or the MJA unless that is so stated.
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- Sally Block