SARS Virus Sullies Sars Name in Norway

　　Global fears of an epidemic have sullied a good name in Norway: Sars. Not SARS as in severe acute respiratory syndrome, but the family name Sars, which is so well-known throughout the Nordic country of 4.5 million that Queen Sonja christened a ship with the name several days ago. According to the state agency Statistics Norway, there are 35 Sars in Norway. The name doesn't have any particular meaning. The best known Norwegian Sars were 19th-century marine biologists Michael Sars and his son, Georg Ossian Sars. They've got a research institute, the Sars Center, named for them. Since the outbreak of SARS, the center in Bergen, 302 miles west of Oslo, has been flooded with e-mails, faxes and phone calls seeking information about the virus. The queen didn't mention the SARS epidemic when she christened the research ship "G.O. Sars," but Ernst and Hans Joergen Sars, whose company bears the name Brothers Sars, are familiar with the disease. "People stop us on the street when we come driving in a company car with Brothers Sars on the side. It's terrible to be associated with something like this," Ernst Sars told state radio network NRK. There have been no confirmed cases of SARS in Norway, Sweden, Denmark or Finland.