Evolving microbial nomenclature
I was a microbiology laboratory technologist before going to medical school and becoming a pathologist. At that time (many years ago), the taxonomists decided to split the genus Pasteurella into two genera of Pasteurella and Yersinia. Even then, I considered this to be done in a very poor way because they split the genus backward, in my opinion, by changing the name of the most notorious bacterium in human history from Pasteurella pestis to Yersinia pestis. It would have been just as simple to make the split in the opposite direction. When I was a pathology resident, we were told our reports should be clear and concise and that words have meaning. Proper communication is necessary to prevent harm.
This sort of renaming is still going on today, and the reasons seem to be bureaucratic muscle flexing to justify the bureaucrats’ existence, rather than to improve things. A recent renaming is the change from NASH (nonalcoholic steatohepatitis) to MASH (metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis). The name change adds nothing but confusion, possibly to make the user sound more erudite while changing nothing of significance. I am so glad that Isabella Martin, MD (https://bit.ly/CT_0326-nomen), recognized and commented on the potential for confusion that renaming might engender and the possibility of it also affecting decision-making.
Louis A. Levy, MD
San Antonio, Tex.