Monkeypox got its name in 1958, after researchers first identified it in a colony of laboratory monkeys in Denmark. Photograph: Cristobal Herrera-Ulashkevich/EPAResearchers say the answer is no. But recently in Brazil, the unfounded fear that monkeys transmit the virus to people has spurred an outbreak of violence against marmosets and capuchin monkeys, leading to the death of at least seven animals, according to Brazilian officials.
“Names matter, and so does scientific accuracy, especially for pathogens and epidemics that we are trying to control,” says Tulio de Oliveira, a bioinformatician at Stellenbosch University in South Africa who has been among those pushing the WHO. In a news conference last week, officials reported a 20 per cent jump in cases over the previous week, recording 35,000 cases, with the vast majority of infections concentrated in the Americas.
Western literature through the ages is replete with ugly comparisons of black people to primates, and throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, illustrations rendering African Americans as having simian features were a staple of popular American newspapers and magazines. Such racist sentiments have not entirely faded. President Ronald Reagan, when he was governor of California, was caught on tape calling African diplomats “monkeys”.