Monkeypox Doesn’t Need to Be Renamed

Updated at 5:35 p.m. ET on August 18, 2022

Joseph Osmundson, a microbiologist at NYU, was walking home recently in New York City when a stranger abruptly shouted “Monkeypox!” at him. He wasn’t infected with the virus, which has been spreading largely through intimate contact between men, nor did he have the characteristic skin lesions. So he must have been targeted for this catcall, he told me, on account of his being “visibly gay.” From his perspective, the name of the disease has made a painful outbreak worse. “Not only is this virus horrible, and people are suffering,” he said, “but it’s also fucking called monkeypox. Are you kidding?”

Since the global crisis started in the spring, efforts to contain the spread of monkeypox have developed in parallel with efforts to change its formal identity. In June, more than two dozen virologists and public-health experts put out for a “neutral, non-discriminatory and non-stigmitizing” nomenclature for the virus and its subtypes; World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus responded by a formal process to create one. A month later, with monkeypox still mired in , the health commissioner of New York City issued an to Ghebreyesus warning that a “public health failure of words with potentially catastrophic consequences” was imminent. “Words can save lives or put them at further risk,” the letter