In 2022, the name 'monkeypox' was rejected as inapt. Now the U.S. is reviving it

"In 2022, the medical establishment and public health world nixed the name "monkeypox" for two key reasons. Animal-to-human transmission comes from rodents. And the name "monkeypox" was seen as racist and stigmatizing language. To replace it, World Health Organization (WHO) officials decided to call the disease that causes painful lesions "mpox." Now, the U.S. is reverting to the old term "monkeypox.""

""The first question is: 'Why?' It doesn't make any sense," says Dr. Joseph Cherabie, an assistant professor of infectious diseases at Washington University in St Louis. He cares for mpox patients and, back in 2022, pushed for the term "monkeypox" to be retired. Dr. Boghuma Titanji echoed that sentiment. "This reversion is just very baffling to me," she says. "No one in the research community is clamoring for this. No one in the public health community is clamoring for this.""

""Monkeypox is the name of the viral disease caused by the monkeypox virus." "That would be inaccurate," says Dr. Daniel Bausch, a professor at the Geneva Graduate Institute and infectious disease expert. "They either are misinformed and they're not aware that it's switched to mpox, or they are not willing to accept the recommendations from [World Health Organization] and the committee that assigns disease names.""

In 2022 public health authorities replaced the name "monkeypox" with "mpox" because animal-to-human transmission is driven by rodents and the original name was considered racist and stigmatizing. WHO officials designated "mpox" for the disease that causes painful lesions, and the U.S. CDC adopted that change. Recently, U.S. agencies began reverting to the term "monkeypox." HHS supplied the statement "Monkeypox is the name of the viral disease caused by the monkeypox virus," but did not explain the reason or timing for the switch. Clinicians and researchers have called the reversion baffling and inaccurate, saying the U.S. seems misinformed or unwilling to accept WHO naming recommendations.

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