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Console manufacturers: time to update your warning notices

By Chris Bennett, Tudor Carsten, Michael R. Coburn, Sarah Dale-Harris, Pablo Guzman, Danielle (Dani) Lemon, Chris Metcalfe and David Spratley

An article in the British Journal of Dermatology has identified a new skin disorder, affectionately called "PlayStation palmar hidradenitis". It was discovered by researchers when a 12 year-old girl was admitted to a hospital, complaining of painful sores on her palms. Turned out she played a lot of PlayStation while gripping the controller tightly and sweating a lot. (Note: that's SWEATING a lot; not SWEARING a lot. To our knowledge, only the former activity is medically relevant).

Her playing sytle combined with her underlying skin disorder caused the sores. The doctors ordered her to stop playing the console for 10 days, and bingo: she made a full recovery.

Console manufacturers will no doubt want to add this potential condition to their warning notices in the future.

Also, we wonder how long it will take for Sony to object to the condition's name. This naming problem is similar to a case in 2005 where researchers named a cancer causing gene "POK Erythroid Myeloid Ontogenic", or POKEMON for short. It didn't take Nintendo's lawyers long to send out the demand letter, after which the gene was renamed "Zbtb7".

PlayStation story here (BBC)

POKEMON story here (Gamasutra)

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Full post as published by Video Game Law Blog on February 24, 2009 (boomark / email).