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Declan Butler, who writes for Nature, was one of the earliest journalists to focus on Avian Flu. He writes today on the changes being made in the way we identify flu viruses.
Politically correct names given to flu viruses
World Health Organization standardizes nomenclature, but experts say GPS sample locations should be given.
Names of flu viruses appearing in the scientific literature have undergone something of a mutation this year. The group of H5N1 avian flu viruses, once known as 'Fujian-like', has morphed into 'Clade 2.3.4'. And its 'Qinghai-like' cousin is now called 'Clade 2.2'. They are part of a complete revision of H5N1 nomenclature recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO).
The system is now more politically correct. It avoids the “stigmatizing labelling of clades by geographical reference”, according to the WHO. In 2006, when scientists assigned the name 'Fujian-like virus' to a vaccine-resistant strain of H5N1 that spread across Asia, China objected strongly to the name. Government officials argued that the southeastern Chinese province of Fujian was tainted by association as the virus spread.
But a WHO official told Nature that discussions for a revised nomenclature were underway before the spat, and that the “impetus was scientific”. “We recognized that naming based on geography was probably not a good idea for other reasons,” she says.
Flu experts say that the new naming recommendations, which have been posted on the WHO website and have been submitted for publication in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases , make a lot of sense. They replace an ad-hoc system, in which researchers would invent their own names for newly isolated groups, with a systematic one in which names have greater biological relevance.
H5N1 viruses are classified on the basis of their haemagglutinin genetic sequence into ten phylogenetic clades — distinct branches of the virus's family tree — and the new system names the viral subgroups according to their position in the tree. It aims to be more logical. For example, Clade 2.3.4 viruses are not restricted to Fuijan province, they have caused cases in humans in China, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam. Clade 2.1 viruses dominate in poultry and humans in Indonesia, for example, whereas Clade 2.2 viruses have the largest geographical spread, causing outbreaks in more than 60 countries from Azerbaijan to Nigeria and Pakistan.
