How does ethics play an important role in the naming of diseases?

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), COVID-19 is a composite name that was constructed in this way. CO comes from corona, VI from virus, and D from disease. The number 19 is derived from the year it was first identified, 2019. COVID-19 refers to the disease, or illness, caused by a new strain of coronavirus. This name was developed using the best practices set forth by WHO, which state that new infectious disease names should be pronounceable and should reference the pathogen that causes them. Because of the risk of unintended adverse responses, WHO now avoids using specific geographic locations, persons, groups, or animals in the designation of new illnesses.

Besides being unscientific, referring to the Great Flu pandemic of 1918–1919 as the “Spanish flu” also perpetuates serious injustice. Because of World War I press censorship, the first newspaper articles did not appear in the countries that were earliest affected but rather appeared only in neutral Spain, causing the illness to be erroneously called “Spanish flu.”

Our current COVID-19 pandemic almost certainly originated in China. After it began spreading globally, xenophobic acts began targeting ethnic Chinese persons around the world. These deplorable instances of intolerance could increase if it becomes known for posterity as the “Chinese Coronavirus” or “Wuhan Flu.” (That said, we are justified in condemning the shameful way that the Chinese communist authorities treated Dr. Li Wenliang before his death from the virus, even arresting him after he tried to raise the alarm about the breakout of COVID-19.) When a similar coronavirus-caused disease was officially designated Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, or MERS, this name inadvertently led to a decline in tourism and other negative effects in an already troubled region of the world.

Discrimination or bigotry only cause more suffering, without helping to fight this new virus and its associated disease with the full arsenal of science, medicine, and public health precautions. The virus is already fear-inducing, so naming it after ethnic or national groups creates a real risk of leading people to turn on individuals or groups to make them into scapegoats. We cannot countenance that kind of injustice. We should focus on unity and efforts to fight COVID-19—nothing and no one else.

Copyright © 2020, The National Catholic Bioethics Center, Philadelphia, PA. All rights reserved.