Misnaming a disease can also have other consequences, as evidenced by the name initially given to the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV): gay-related immune deficiency, or GRID. The world came to see the disease as pulsing out from Spain, a belief that was encouraged by propagandists in other countries whom it suited to shift the blame. The disease had been in the United States for two months already, and in France for several weeks at least, but that information was kept out of their newspapers. Spain, however, was neutral in that war, and when the first cases of the flu occurred there, they were widely reported. The world was at war in 1918, and the belligerent nations censored their press, not wanting to damage their populations’ morale.
One prominent example, she explains, is Spanish flu: “The name of diseases has always been as much about politics and the human need to identify a scapegoat, as it has been about accurately labeling a new threat to life,” writes Spinney. How these - and many other diseases - got their common names has an “ugly history,” as journalist Laura Spinney recounts in a fascinating article published recently in the nonprofit digital magazine Aeon.
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