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Antimicrobial resistance, antibiotic resistance, AMR, drug-resistant bacteria, drug-resistant infections, multi-drug resistance, superbugs….in our fields, the names we use for what we study are long, unwieldy, and often not quite right, , and have been written about how the terms we use make it challenging for the many publics who we want to recruit, enthuse, and champion to engage in this often quite technocratically-led global problem. 

I have always found this to be a challenging position, since most areas of health also have technically complicated or even unintelligible names. Think HIV/AIDS, polio(myelitis), Ebola haemorrhagic fever…the list goes on. None of these names themselves were ‘too complicated’ to permeate into the public consciousness.  We never consider the public to be uninterested in - or worse, incapable of understanding - those health domains. So, while I understand that AMR researchers might be frustrated about the general lack of public uptake and interest in our research, it is also surprising to me the time we have devoted, myself included, to trying to change the terms we use to land better.  

I’m often reminded of the Shakespeare soliloquy in Romeo and Juliet. Spoken by Juliet in Act 2, Scene 2 (the balcony scene), Juliet complains: 

                                                                                   What’s in a name? That which we call a rose 
                                                                                   By any other name would smell as sweet; 
                                                                                   So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call’d, 
                                                                                   Retain that dear perfection which he owes 
                                                                                   Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name, 
                                                                                   And for that name, which is no part of thee, 
                                                                                   Take all myself.

Here, Juliet’s chief complaint centres around Romeo’s family being Montagues, a condition that precludes Romeo and Juliet’s budding (pardon the pun) relationship, by virtue of the Montagues’ feud with Juliet’s family, the Capulets.  Juliet uses a rose’s perfume as a counterexample, explaining that it would ‘smell as sweet’ – in other words, be unchanged - irrespective of the name of the flower in question. Her point, that one’s affiliation with a name should be insignificant, since a person’s qualities should be judged independently of what their affiliation is, can also be applied beyond the realm of family affiliations, and to the question of AMR terminology. I put it to you that the problem is not what we call AMR, but our expectation that finding the ‘right name’ will somehow result in a different, sustained, or better reaction from the many publics with whom we engage.   The question in AMR taxonomy, then, isn’t whether another name would be sweeter, but: are we suffering from a serious case of ‘the grass is always greener’?