I'm inclined to replace all but the first instance of the word "pathogen" with "germ" in this article. Is that okay, or would it be in some way too inaccurate? Melanie jane rose (talk) 14:04, 30 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I think people who want to read about such a subject deserve accurate terms, so long as they are linked to an explanation or definition, which pathogen is. We have already discussed this kind of case on this wiki. Macdonald-ross (talk) 15:16, 30 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I will, but not just at the moment. It occurred to me a bit later that many of the readers of this page would be young adults whose native language is not English. A medical student with, say, Russian or Swedish as a native language would be quite happy with 'pathogen', but would have to look up 'germ' in a dictionary. That is because most European languages are well supplied with words derived from Latin. We are a wiki for English as a second language as much as we are a wiki for young people. Macdonald-ross (talk) 15:45, 30 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
