Alaskapox being renamed to pre­vent ‘stig­ma­tiz­ing’ the state and hurt­ing tourism

Epi­demi­ol­o­gists are renam­ing the dis­ease Alaskapox out of fear that the name of the ill­ness may ham­per tourism and stig­ma­tize the state.
Alaskapox, now called Bore­alpox, gained media spot­light in Jan­u­ary fol­low­ing the abrupt death of an elder­ly man in the remote Kenai Penin­su­la after he was hos­pi­tal­ized with the dis­ease last Novem­ber.
Joseph McLaugh­lin, Alaska’s state epi­demi­ol­o­gist who dis­cov­ered the virus, told the mag­a­zine Sci­ence, “It became clear that the name Alaskapox could be stig­ma­tiz­ing to the state.”
Alsakapox was dis­cov­ered in 2015 when a woman in Fair­banks was treat­ed for a mys­te­ri­ous lesion. She recov­ered quick­ly from the con­di­tion.
McLaugh­lin coau­thored sev­er­al papers about the virus since the first case, includ­ing iden­ti­fy­ing its genet­ic sequence. By the end of 2023, only fiv …