Stephan Hawking’s disease may be a more international reference. But I remember reading “A Brief History in Time” by Stephan Hawking, and he referred to it as Lou Gehrig’s disease. Of course, Lou Gehrig was a famous baseball player whose stellar career was cut short by his disease of his namesake.
Does the name of the former major leaguer transcend national boundaries?
No, I think Stephen Hawking had his eye on his international market. In Britain it’s called Motor Neurone Disease.
I’ve heard it as ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis). In Japan it’s known by the direct translation of that term.
I’ve heard some people say it will (or should) be known as Hawking’s Disease.
Ah, found a cite:
They call it Lou Gerhig’s disease (also ALS) in Canada
I can report that in Central American countries and other Latin American ones, it is known as “el mal de Gehrig” (The disease of Gehrig). Also known as “distrofia muscular” (Muscular dystrophy).
Here is a Venezuelan cite:
http://www.mipunto.com/deportes/beisbol/grandes_ligas/estrellas_gehrig.jsp
Aren’t ALS and MS two different diseases?
And the most ironic part of it all is, Lou Gehrig actually caught this and died from it.
Never let them name a disease after you!
The general tradition in medicine is to name a new disease after the the first diagnosed patient.
AFAICR There are several forms of Muscular dystrophy; one of them (Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) is Gehrig’s disease.
As for ALS and MS:
Yes, completely. (And this is so whether you really meant to type “MS” or “MD”)
Muscular Dystrophy (MD) is a not one disease. Rather, it is a group of diseases where the primary problem is in the muscle.
Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is a disease affecting the myelin (“insulation”) of the white matter (connections) of the brain and spinal cord.
ALS is a disease which affects the actual motor nerve cells themselves (i.e. the motor neurons). It also can have some manifestations that resemble those found in MS.
Yes, I meant “MD”. :smack:
IANAMP (Medicial Practitioner), but I have seen it referred to as Lou Gehrig’s disease here in India in various texts.
I sincerely doubt it’ll end up being called Hawking’s Disease.
Who remembers who Parkinson was? Nobody. Still has a disease named after him, though.
In The Netherlands we refer to Multiple Sclerosis simply by that name, or abbreviate it to MS.
But Lou Gehrig was not the first diagnosed with ALS. Furthermore, they sometimes named diseases after the first doctor to describe it in the literature. Hansen’s disease, for example.
Nowadays, the rule is to name new diseases after the city or area it was first discovered in. Ebola, for example, is a river in the Congo, hantavirus is named after a river in Korea. Legionaire’s disease is an exception and the American Legion is still (last I heard) trying to get it renamed to something else.
But this has drawbacks since they sometimes discover more than one disease in a city. A few years ago, someone found a new strain of some disease (I forget which one) in Chicago. There already was a disease named after Chicago, as well as Illinois, so the discoverer named it after Michael Jordan. This violated the naming rules, but it was accepted before the powers that be realized that.