Under our current age of Trump, it\u2019s frankly stranger when the federal government doesn\u2019t do something completely unproductive. The latest bit of pointlessness? The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has switched back to using the name \u201cmonkeypox\u201d\u2014an outdated label for the disease mpox.<\/p>\n
NPR was the first to report<\/a> on the name switchback, which appears to have been implemented sometime in the last month. Nearly three years ago, virologists pushed for monkeypox to be retired, both for being potentially stigmatizing and factually inaccurate, since monkeys aren\u2019t the primary hosts of the virus in the wild. HHS confirmed the switch to Gizmodo but offered no elaboration as to why it did so.<\/p>\n Why the change? <\/p>\n In November 2022, the World Health Organization officially adopted<\/a> the label \u201cmpox\u201d to describe the viral disease, following a concerted effort<\/a> by relevant experts and scientists to retire \u201cmonkeypox.\u201d This name was quickly reaffirmed by many health organizations and countries, including the U.S.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n The reasoning was twofold. One, though humans first discovered monkeypox in a group of lab monkeys in the 1950s, we now know that rodents are its predominant animal hosts. Since 2022, the disease has also spread widely between people, causing outbreaks across the globe\u2014another sign of monkeypox\u2019s outdatedness. Though outbreaks have generally lessened in most parts of the world, the disease still causes large surges of illness<\/a> to this day.<\/p>\n Secondly, many scientists noted<\/a> the harmful racial and ethnic connotations of the name. People have long used \u201cmonkey\u201d as a racist shorthand for Black or African people, and some have cast monkeypox as strictly an \u201cAfrican\u201d disease (mpox is still most prevalent in parts of Africa, but the global outbreak has clearly illustrated that it doesn\u2019t respect borders).<\/p>\n Boghuma Titanji, a virus researcher at Emory University originally from Cameroon, recounted to NPR how her attempts to share information about the mpox outbreaks in 2022 quickly led to a pile-on from racist trolls on social media. \u201cLikening me to a monkey, asking me to go back to Africa, where people have sex with monkeys, and being someone who defends gay sex with monkeys. Those were some of the really, really dark messages that I got in my inbox,\u201d she told NPR.<\/p>\n What\u2019s in a name? <\/p>\n There is, admittedly, some room for confusion here.<\/p>\n As it turns out, different organizations are responsible for naming a virus as opposed to the disease it causes. And while most experts and health agencies defer to the WHO\u2019s guidance for a disease\u2019s name, it\u2019s the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV) that decides the formal name of the virus.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Right around the same time that WHO was considering a name change, the ICTV stated that it would not drastically change its labeling of the virus behind mpox. Though the group has been updating its classification of many virus groups lately, it ultimately only added a broader label<\/a> in front to illustrate its closeness to other similar pox viruses. So its official species name is now Orthopoxvirus monkeypox (if it\u2019s any consolation, many scientists have complained<\/a> about the ICTV\u2019s virus name updating for other reasons).<\/p>\n It\u2019s this distinction that HHS may be hanging its hat on in order to support the name switch. An HHS spokesperson told Gizmodo, \u201cMonkeypox is the name of the viral disease caused by the monkeypox virus.\u201d<\/p>\n To be clear, though, that\u2019s not accurate. Or at least, monkeypox isn\u2019t the name that most every other health agency around the world now uses for the viral disease caused by the monkeypox virus; that\u2019s mpox. That long list also currently includes the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, since the agency (part of HHS) is still using mpox on its webpage<\/a> about the disease. Since the last update of that page occurred in April 2025, though, it\u2019s probably only a matter of time before that changes as well.<\/p>\n