Hacker News Reader

Comment by shadowgovt | Hacker News Reader

FWIW, since Down's is caused by (we're pretty sure) mitotic error, it can't be completely eliminated from the gene pool. 99% of cases did not occur on hereditary lines. With or without the existence of the treatment, Down's cases would continue to surface. So it's in the category of "treatments parents could choose to apply to their offspring," and generally parents get pretty broad leeway there in choice of the kind of offspring they're aiming for (starting with dating the guy with pretty eyes or the girl with the cute hair thing).

... Whether society is mature enough to recognize that in the presence of that treatment, Down's people will still be born and they have every bit the same dignity-of-human-life as the rest of us is a very important question.

View on HN

As the parent of a child with Down syndrome, I really appreciate the way you and the parent comment approached this topic. Thank you.

Tiny nit, in the US it’s “Down syndrome”, not “Down’s”. Apparently we name conditions with a possessive if named for someone with it (“Lou Gehrig’s”) and without the possessive if named for, say, the person who first described the condition in a medical journal.

Thank you! I will keep that in mind.

I never knew why the possessive wasn't used, thank you!

I don’t think this is true. Two counterexamples: Huntington didn’t have Huntington’s; Wilson didn’t have Wilson’s.

I had to look both of those up, and you’re right. The rule is inconsistently applied for sure. This got me curious about where the so-called rule came from. Wikipedia says:

> Auto-eponyms may use either the possessive or non-possessive form, with the preference to use the non-possessive form for a disease named for a physician or health care professional who first described it and the possessive form in cases of a disease named for a patient (commonly, but not always, the first patient) in whom the particular disease was identified.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_eponymous_diseases#Aut...

This is sourced by a link to the American Association of Medical Transcriptionists, which is not a body I’d heard of but I guess have some skin in the game when it comes to the intersection of medicine and grammar. https://www.mtstars.com/word-For-eponyms-AAMT-advocates-drop...

In the UK for example we don’t go for this performative anti-apostropheism that Americans are so fond of. So it really depends on where you’re from.

“Performative” feels a bit judgmental, given that America/UK differences in orthography are common. But yeah, y’all spell it differently than we do. I think you might also capitalize the “s” in syndrome?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com