![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
that people have this overwhelming urge to call things something they are not?
Current example bothering me is Distemper. Distemper is a particular virus, which affects canids primarily but some other animals (mustelids, raccoons...) are also unlucky enough to be susceptible. It causes respiratory and neurologic signs. This is distemper.
So why do people persist in calling feline panleukopenia "Cat distemper"? It's an entirely unrelated virus which causes intestinal upset and a severe drop in white blood cells (which is, by the way, exactly what "panleukopenia" means--low white blood cells). It is a parvo virus, not a distemper virus, and there's pretty decent evidence that canine parvo virus started as a strain of feline parvo virus. So you'd think, what with it being a disease in existence long before canine parvo, that it would have it's own proper name and the canine disease would be named after it, right? No. Of course not. It gets dubbed "distemper" despite being a totally different disease with different signs and a different viral cause.
And now this shit. I read the title to this article and said "What the hell is equine distemper?" I'm a veterinarian, I should know this shit, right? Well it isn't anything. What they're calling "equine distemper" isn't even VIRUS, let alone a distemper virus! It's a bacterial infection (Streptococcus equi, if you care) that has been a problem for hundreds or thousands of years, and ALREADY HAS A COMMON NAME (Strangles) which has been in use since before either virus or bacteria was identified, so what is the bloody point of dubbing it this other, misleading name? Fuck. Isn't reporting supposed to spread accurate information?
Current example bothering me is Distemper. Distemper is a particular virus, which affects canids primarily but some other animals (mustelids, raccoons...) are also unlucky enough to be susceptible. It causes respiratory and neurologic signs. This is distemper.
So why do people persist in calling feline panleukopenia "Cat distemper"? It's an entirely unrelated virus which causes intestinal upset and a severe drop in white blood cells (which is, by the way, exactly what "panleukopenia" means--low white blood cells). It is a parvo virus, not a distemper virus, and there's pretty decent evidence that canine parvo virus started as a strain of feline parvo virus. So you'd think, what with it being a disease in existence long before canine parvo, that it would have it's own proper name and the canine disease would be named after it, right? No. Of course not. It gets dubbed "distemper" despite being a totally different disease with different signs and a different viral cause.
And now this shit. I read the title to this article and said "What the hell is equine distemper?" I'm a veterinarian, I should know this shit, right? Well it isn't anything. What they're calling "equine distemper" isn't even VIRUS, let alone a distemper virus! It's a bacterial infection (Streptococcus equi, if you care) that has been a problem for hundreds or thousands of years, and ALREADY HAS A COMMON NAME (Strangles) which has been in use since before either virus or bacteria was identified, so what is the bloody point of dubbing it this other, misleading name? Fuck. Isn't reporting supposed to spread accurate information?
