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Silly Acronym Disease

StingrayStingray Elite Ranger
in Zocalo v2.0
... or SAD as they would say in the advertisement. I just saw a documentary and I noticed the abundance of acronyms used to describe medical conditions. I was shaking my head and chuckling in disbelief by the end of the show and not because I am a heartless bastard who takes pleasure in poking fun of people who are suffering from psychological or chronic diseases, but because of all the acronyms used to describe medical conditions. I guess we ran out of Latin words, or meaningless words that start with an X, Y or Z and researcher-names-who-identified-the-condition-first so we are left with making $h1t up as we go. :D

And there I thought humanity had seen it all, no, we are still faced with new diseases that need to be named, and those who do this have absolutely no imagination.

[URL="http://messybeast.com/dragonqueen/medical-acronyms.htm"]Here's a list of general (not limited to diseases) medical acronyms that I stumbled over.[/URL] ;)

Comments

  • DarthCaligulaDarthCaligula Elite Ranger
    [SIZE="5"]YHBT YHL HAND.[/SIZE]


    Ha ha! Secret invisible text lets me type in all caps! Take that Sanfam, Biggles, and all you other oppressors!
  • BigglesBiggles <font color=#AAFFAA>The Man Without a Face</font>
    A lecturer in communications systems, which similarly features a huge abundance of acronyms, once told us about a technical meeting he attended involving both academics and industry. The meeting went on for a couple of hours before someone finally asked, "What does [acronym] mean?" When the answer was delivered, half the people in the room disagreed. Within five minutes, they found out that everyone had been talking about different things for most of the meeting.
  • Random ChaosRandom Chaos Actually Carefully-selected Order in disguise
    TTIB

    (This thread is brilliant)
  • StingrayStingray Elite Ranger
    I've been taught to always spell out an acronym the first time I use it in a document to make sure we are all on the same page. I guess it's a habit that is fading away with all the internet speak and other nonsense we are submerged with. ;)
  • Entil'ZhaEntil'Zha I see famous people
    TMFA


    (too many fucking acronyms)
  • JackNJackN <font color=#99FF99>Lightwave Alien</font>
    Omgwtflolroflmao!
  • Capt.MontoyaCapt.Montoya Ranger
    One of the first times I found TMFA was in an organic chemistry class in university, when learning about characterization by Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR). The people that are experts in the technique created some strange and sometimes silly acronyms for the many variants and methods they use:
    [url]http://www.bmrb.wisc.edu/education/nmr_acronym[/url]
    Sometimes I get the impression that they actually first chose the word for nerd humor (i.e. calling your method INADEQUATE) and then defined the acronym to fit it (that would be a backronym).

    Later, in grad school I learned a bit about TEM (transmission electron microscopy), this technique also uses way too many acronyms, one of the most famous textbooks about it has a few pages of acronyms, so many that the list included and defined TMDA, that's where I first learned that you could have too many damned acronyms.

    But the STEM fields sure loves their TLAs and other acronyms.
  • E.TE.T Quote-o-matic
    [QUOTE=Capt.Montoya;194165]one of the most famous textbooks about it has a few pages of acronyms[/QUOTE]Only few pages?
    [url]http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/acronyms.cgi?program=shuttle&searchall=true[/url]

    Heck, IIRC one those two books about life of Richard Feynman (in part about Challenger disaster investigation) mentioned NASA having whole book just for acronyms.
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