On Sat, Sep 28, 2002 at 11:43:04AM -0400, BG Greer, PhD wrote:

    I have seen this in other areas, such as mental retardation. Terms
    gradually get into everyday parlance, become stigmatizing, and so
    folks search and come up with a new term. Could this be happening
    with "spastic vs. dystonia"? Just a rhetorical question.

I don't know if this particular piece of terminology is used
elsewhere, but one of the physios I saw after my last bad fall,
referred to my spasticity as `hypertonic'.  Hadn't heard it before -
and the opposite is of course `hypotonic'.  I think, oddly enough,
that I prefer spasticity - despite spastic being used as a common
insult, and cerebral palsy.  Plain, unvarnished, and straight to the
point.  And now the words seem about to be superseded, I feel a very
odd affection (!?) for them, they are ingrained as part of who I am,
and - VERY oddly - I no longer feel the shame and stigma that the
world attaches to them.  Strange....

I'd have to agree with your rhetorical question, Bobby.

And `dystonia', sounds like a small Eastern-European country to me,
rather than a medical term. ;-)

Rayna