Goats and soda: NPR

In 2022, the medical establishment and the world of public health nixed the name “Monkeypox” for two key reasons. Animal transmission to human comes from rodents. And the name “Monkeypox” was considered a racist and stigmatizing language.

To replace it, officials of the World Health Organization (WHO) have decided to call the disease that causes painful “MPOX” lesions.

Now the United States returns to the old term “Monkeypox”.

“The first question is:” Why? “It makes no sense,” said Dr. Joseph Cherabia, assistant professor of infectious diseases at Washington University in St Louis. He takes care of patients with mpox and, in 2022, pushed for the term “monkeypox” to be removed.

Dr. Boghuma Titanji echoes this feeling. “This reversion is simply confusing for me,” she said. “No one in the research community is asking for. No one in the public health community is claiming.” Titanji is infectious doctor and mpox researcher at Emory University.

In response to an NPR email requesting a change in terminology, the US Ministry of Health and Social Services (HHS) sent this declaration: “Monkeypox is the name of the viral disease caused by the Monkeypox virus.”

“It would be inaccurate,” said Dr. Daniel Bausch, professor at the Graduated Institute in Geneva and expert in infectious diseases. “Either they are badly informed and they do not know that it has passed to Mpox, or they are not willing to accept the recommendations of [World Health Organization] and the committee which affects the names of diseases. “”

In 2022, the American centers for the control and prevention of diseases adopted the change of WHO in MPOX. The HHS spokesman did not respond to clarification requests on the reasons why HHS used the old term or when he started to do. The change dates back at least August 28, 2025, when the State Department used the term “Monkeypox” in an email at NPR.

Although there is no official announcement – or explanation – of the United States on the Switch, MPOX experts have assumptions – and, they say, that is part of a much longer story to debate what to call disease.

Why was it called “Monkeypox” in the first place?

The virus was discovered for the first time in 1958 in Denmark in a group of monkeys that were kept in a laboratory for research. This is how the term monkey was attached to the virus.

When the first human case of MPOX was discovered in 1970 in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the researchers tried to determine if the young boy who was sick had contacts with monkeys. It was not until later that they realized that the virus was in fact not to skip monkeys from humans. Instead, they now believe that the virus comes from contact with small mammals and rodents in the forest in Central and West Africa, like squirrels that are driven for food. It then spreads between humans by close contact and sexual contact.

But the name Monkeypox remained until 2022, when the virus took off worldwide. According to the WHO, he spread suddenly and quickly in more than 100 countries and has mainly had a gay impact.

It was then that there was a concerted push to change the name. Titanji understands from the first hand why.

Why does the name change?

In 2022, while the epidemic took place and spread, Titanji would publish the latest medical information on his account on Twitter, now called X.

She was shocked by the messages she started to receive.

“Because I am a black woman, the name of Monkeypox was co -opted to direct the vitriol towards me,” recalls Titanji. “Part of the [messages] appear to me to a monkey, [some were] Asking me to return to Africa where the disease comes from and where people have sex with monkeys, and [some messages were about me] Be someone who defends gay sex with monkeys. These are some of the really dark direct messages that I put in my reception box during this period. “”

The term “monkey” has a long history of being used as a racist and dehumanizing insult against blacks. Cherabia says that the name also played in problematic stories that associate the LGBTQ + community with bestiality because the name has aroused false hypotheses that people obtained the virus by having sex with monkeys.

In 2022, patients, health workers and others urged WHO to rename the disease. During this summer, New York Health Commissioner, Dr. Ashwin Vasa, sent a letter to whom them quickly renamed Monkeypox, citing “potentially devastating and stigmatizing effects”.

In November of the same year, which announced the new name of the diseases and a one -year transition period. (While the WHO names diseases, the underlying virus is appointed by the International Committee for Viruses Taxonomy and has not changed monkeypox Orthopoxvirus. Bausch says that part of the reason is historical consistency in medical research terminology.)

Titanji says that the change was greeted by patients and the scientific community. “It moved the attention of what I would call a distraction – in terms of easy name to troll – and really emphasized the problem to accomplish,” she said.

It is far from the first time that a disease name has raised concerns concerning the stigma of groups of people or geographic areas. In February 2020, which gave a name COVID-19, replacing the informal name that many had adopted on the basis of the city where it appeared in China for the first time: “Wuhan virus”.

Why did the United States come back to “Monkeypox”?

Although health and social services have not provided an explanation for a quarter of work, Cherabie, the professor of the University of Washington, says that it has the impression of adapting to a model. “It simply corresponds to the game book of this administration to return in controversial terms,” ​​he said. “This is a simple provocation.”

This is not the only case of a potentially problematic designation. The 2015 WHO directives discourage the names of diseases that refer to specific places, people and professions, to avoid stigma. However, these directives are not followed in all cases. Certain diseases – such as the respiratory syndrome of the Middle East, or seas – continue to be appointed according to places and people.

“There are many, many viruses and diseases that have really received the wrong name,” said Bausch, who is also a guest professor at the National University of Singapore. “We had to change the Ebola virus and the Sudan and Marburg virus [which are named after a river, country and city] And many other things, but I don’t think there is a huge appetite to do it because of the confusion it would create. “”

However, he warned that if the United States is actually returning to the term “Monkeypox” after a successful global transition to Mpox, this could itself create confusion.

“”[It must be] No more political motivation for this to happen, “said Bausch.” If there is an important body of people who feel offended by something, you know, why not listen to them? “”

Her meaning is that the Trump administration could have considered the original name change “a awakened thing” and that it could be part of the Trump administration’s tense relationship with the World Health Organization. Trump announced that he would withdraw the United States from who in the inauguration evening.

Asked about the American return on the term “Monkeypox”, with its implications, the media team for which did not address change but referred to articles on the original name change in 2022 and their 2015 guidelines on denomination diseases.

For her part, Titanji says that she will stick to the term MPOX.