In a sign of the times, the TPTB at the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation today that the organization is abandoning its name and simply adopting the initials JDRF.

True to type—type 1 diabetes, that is—the 41-year-old, New York-based non-profit unveiled its new name, logo and tagline that it says “better reflects the state of type 1 diabetes (T1D) and the organization’s work, which remains committed to curing, treating, and preventing the disease.”

It’s juvenile of me to quibble really about the loss of the old moniker. True, the disease is now known as T1D, not juvenile diabetes. And yes, the disease affects adults just as much as, if not more than, kids. OTOH, if it’s truly no longer a juvenile disease, then why keep the ‘J’ in JDRF? IMHO, the organization should consider changing the name to Type 1 Diabetes Research Foundation. People are savvy enough to learn to use the shorthand T1DRF.

BGI. GAVI. BMJ. PATH. All these biomedically-relevant acronyms used to stand for something. Now, they are just letters evoking a bygone era.

Most people don’t bother spelling out acquired immune deficiency syndrome. But no one refers to AIDS as GRID anymore as scientists now realize that the disease isn’t in fact caused by ‘gay-related immune deficiency’. Similarly, HIV is not called LAV or HTLV-III, as the virus once was once known.

The acronym epidemic has spread too far in biomedicine, from nonprofits to the names of clinical trials themselves (remember the TORPEDO trial?). The cure, BTW, is just a couple of extra keystrokes away.