posted
No worries. I was corrected on this (the inclusion of the possessive) about 7 months ago -- first I'd heard of it.
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Well, thanks, you probably saved me being corrected more rudely by my mom. (She runs the craniofacial clinics for Kaiser So. Cal. and we have lots of interesting discussions. She used to work newborn screening, as you can probably tell from one of my previous posts in this thread. )
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Hmmm... I usually figure if I can get people to agree that terms like "mongoloid" and "retard" are uncool and generally unacceptable, I'm way ahead of the game.
Is it just me, or would "Down syndrome" and "Down's syndrome" sound pretty much the same when spoken?
Seriously, I wasn't aware there was a general trend to eliminate the possessives in the syndrome names or that anyone other than mavericks in the medical system were onboard with it (Hi Sara). I know that advocacy organizations involved with Down syndrome did stop using the posessive years ago, but I'm not sure how many.
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Hey, maybe you should ask her what current usage is in her environment.
This is from the homepage of a pediatrician whose son has Down syndrome. Again, it was news to me. Looks like the usage may vary by country, though.
quote:Down based this unfortunate name on his notion that these children looked like people from Mongolia, who were thought then to have an arrested development. This ethnic insult came under fire in the early 1960s from Asian genetic researchers, and the term was dropped from scientific use. Instead, the condition became called "Down's syndrome." In the 1970s, an American revision of scientific terms changed it simply to "Down syndrome," while it still is called "Down's" in the UK and some places in Europe.
When I say "Down's syndrome," there's more of a snake-like hiss. Might just be me.
I like the dropping of the possessive, though. Places the emphasis less on the person who initially described it (as if that would give that person ownership). Seems more person-with-disability-oriented rather than researcher-oriented.
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quote:Seems more person-with-disability-oriented rather than researcher-oriented.
How? It's still named after the same researcher. If the point is to direct focus away from the researcher, then it seems to me the way to do that would be to give the condition a descriptive name.
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I prefer Trisomy 21 myself, but the technical term is obscure enough that it isn't yet suitable for widespread communication. Yet.
But meanwhile, the dropping of the possessive does make sense to me. Certainly the condition belongs more to those whom it affects directly than the one who happened to first descibe it, no?
It's a small point, but one that causes me no great pain to concede. I don't make a habit of correcting others about it, though, as that is likely to be more confusing or off-putting than helpful, IMO. However, we were discussing terminology here, so it seemed fitting.
[ December 14, 2004, 10:23 PM: Message edited by: Sara Sasse ]
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Actually, I just got an e-mail back from my mom-- she says the usual reference to it is as "Trisomy 21 or Robertsonion translocation", but when talking to laymen about it, she says "Down's Syndrome-- Dr. Down named it".
So, that's my mom's take on it.
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I've always suspected those who trained me of being medical mavericks in these sorts of areas. They have proven to be unusually up-to-date on such issues, although not as much as I would like.
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I am very confused by your language. You use "mongolism" and "mongoloid" for the same thing : Down syndrome (thank you to learn us the exact term, Sara Sasse). In french, as i said before, we make the distinction with this words.
But I know that also is similar for you about french language. So, sorry if i make a nonsense...
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I was corrected on this (the inclusion of the possessive) about 7 months ago -- first I'd heard of it.
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