News.com is reporting that The Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York was threatened with legal action by Nintendo after one of its geneticists named a cancer-causing gene after Pokemon.In a scientific article in Nature back in January 2005, Pier Paolo Pandolfi named the gene POKEMON, which stands for the POK erythroid myeloid ontogenic gene according to Wikipedia. The article predictably enough led to news headlines like "Pokemon causes cancer".
Nintendo didn't like the idea of their top-selling kids franchise being associated with deadly diseases, so used their Pokemon USA subsidiary to threaten the center with the law if they didn't rename the gene.
The center complied, and the gene now sports the not-as-snappy title Zbtb7.
News.com: Pokemon USA threat leads to gene name change
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