the Rousseau-Pradié pass of arms fuels the debate on the name “monkey pox” – Liberation

MP Nupes recalled Thursday, August 4, the discriminating nature of a remark made by the elected LR. Like LGBT associations, she asks that the name of the stigmatizing virus be changed.–

“It’s outrageous to say that in a hemicycle. We are in 2022, and any act of homophobia must be punished by law, it is a crime. Sandrine Rousseau has not finished with Aurélien Pradié. Invited this Thursday morning on LCI, MP Nupes (EE-LV) again pointed to the homophobic content of the remarks made by MP Les Républicains the day before. During his question to the government about monkeypox, which mostly affects men who have gay sex, “Aurélien Pradié, it is noted in the minutes, then spoke in the Assembly [et a dit] : “It is especially a shame for the monkeys””, Rousseau had brought back to the hemicycle on Wednesday. The elected representative of Paris drives the point home this Thursday: “We need a sanction to match this insult.”

For his part, Pradié says to himself “deeply sorry” on RMC and believes that his remarks have undergone «manipulation» par «l’inquisitrice» Rousseau : “It’s in no way what I wanted to express, I don’t know if it was said like that”, he argues. Instead, here is Pradié, very demagogically, clarifying his remark – without manipulating anything himself, of course – and taking up the increasingly shared suggestion of his ecologist colleague: “What I meant was that I did not understand why this disease was named after an animal, but never in my life did I want to express a link between monkeys and a sexual orientation” , assures the deputy LR, who claims a «engagement» for a long time against homophobia.

“His share of discrimination”

Sandrine Rousseau, who puts forward a claim “associations”, actually wants to change the name of monkey pox, which “refers to a history of discrimination for gay people, she says. During the arrival of the AIDS epidemic, where there was a belief in the passage of the disease from monkeys to humans, with all its share of discrimination.

In mid-June, the World Health Organization explained that it was considering “change virus name” through its managing director, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, and promised “announcements as soon as possible”. On July 26, the city of New York reminded the WHO of this promise to rename the disease, the name of which it considers stigmatizing. “We are increasingly concerned about the potentially devastating and stigmatizing effects that messages around the monkeypox virus can have on [des] already vulnerable communities,” worried the health commissioner of the city on the east coast of the United States.

Detected in early May, the unusual upsurge in monkeypox cases outside central and western African countries where the virus is endemic has since spread across the globe, with Europe as its epicenter. In most cases, the patients are men who have sex with men, relatively young, and living mainly in cities, according to the WHO.

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