Probably not entirely obsolete, but yeah less people tend to use those two terms these days... They mean the same thing anyway, so I don't see why people would want to remove the terms other than convenience's sake. I think the more interesting thing is the attempted abolishing of Reiter's Syndrome. Morality and ethics aside, I don't think it's fair to remove Reiter's contributions to the medical field but I couldn't really care less. They can call it whatever they want - medical terms change all the time... Pneumocystis carinii/jerovicii pneumonia bla bla bla... We still call it PCP rather than PJP. 

Ondine's curse... lol... this was mentioned for interest's sake during my pre-clinical years, but I don't think most of us would have experienced someone with it anyway. Lost of automatic, reflexive respiration due to central respi centre insult; hence the patient has to "remember" to breathe voluntarily. As you would have expected, they probably won't "remember" to breathe during sleep so they go into respi arrest if no ventilatory support was provided. The various steal syndromes on the other hand, I understand how it works but don't really know much about the significance of it or how to manage it, that's probably out of my depth for now anyway...

Anyway, there's far too much to know in medicine, and even the most knowledgeable doctor would certainly struggle in areas which he/she is not specially trained in. It's good to know as much as possible, even those rare shit that occurs in 1/10M people; but there are certainly some exotic stuff that very few people hear about, let alone master and understand.

The advice that we often get is to know those diseases that are:
1. Common and simple
2. Common and deadly
3. Rare and deadly

But yeah, that itself is probably a never-ending list.

I just read this on the previous page, and I have something to add in:

First of all... the perspective of "your results are good, why not study medicine" in our community is wrong and should ideally be changed. No point forcing someone who has straight As in SPM to go down the medical field when his/her interests lie somewhere else, be it engineering/accountancy/law/art/commerce bla bla.

Secondly, how many of those "straight As" students are actually the real cream of the crop? Talk to any teacher today, and I bet my arse that at least 9 out of 10 will say the SPM marking criteria is a joke. Everyone gets an A for everything, and if previously schools are competing for excellent passing rates, now they are competing for straight As rate. Not to belittle the students who worked hard for great results in SPM; but either our marking criteria is far too lenient, or maybe our next generation's intellect has outgrown our examination standards (ie the education syllabus should be revamped !!).

The third issue would be PSD/JPA scholarships and loans. The aim of the scholarships is for the rakyat's benefit, where students get trained and return to serve the country. I'm not sure about any available statistics, but the majority of my cohort who are actual scholarship/loan holders are probably not going back, at least in the near future and possibly forever. One may argue that it doesn't matter as long as they pay back, which they are planning to do anyway.

Nevertheless, would it be better if the money was spent on improving the facilities, personnel, and resources at local institutions to provide more medical student intakes and of course improve the quality of the course? More students would get a chance in pursuing their aspirations, probably more would be retained in the country and hence reducing brain drain, and definitely providing more graduates who are well-trained and fitting our local population demographics.

Like what Dr Wee said:

Maybe JPA would like to offer more local medical scholarships instead of sending people to overseas (and risk them not returning later)... The money spent on sending one student to say UK, could easily be used on producing 2 students from local private unis. Probably 10 or even more from UM/UKM. I probably am being a bit impractical and unrealistic here; but I can't help but feel ironic that our country's best brains are being lost to other countries while our own country is seriously lacking medical staff and is forced to recruit foreign personnel, which may not necessarily be less smarter but surely less comfortable because of the language, cultural, and environmental difference.

So why not use our people's money to train our own doctors, in our country, to serve our community?