Nonya Bidniss :CIAverified:<p>Want to start a fight among virus experts? Ask about HIV’s new name</p><p>"Mostly, other researchers are content with that, regarding what Kuhn and his colleagues at the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses, or ICTV, do as roughly equivalent to biological stamp collecting. Recently, though, they did something so brazen, so high-handed, that outrage was unavoidable: They essentially renamed all the viruses.</p><p>The change unfolded slowly, over the course of the last four years. But it largely escaped notice until December, when the U.S. National Library of Medicine said it would change names in its databases of genes and viruses to comply with the ICTV’s new monikers.</p><p>Many new names sounded as if they’d been cooked up by a medieval monk. HIV-1 would henceforth be known as Lentivirus humimdef1. SARs-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid, would be known as Betacoronavirus pandemicum. Ebola was now Orthoebolavirus zairense.</p><p>“Somebody needs to take away whatever drugs the committee is on,” wrote Kristian Andersen, a virologist at Scripps Institute, on Bluesky. Boghuma Titanji, an HIV researcher at Emory University, chimed in: “How do I get on this committee which sounds like they do mushrooms while renaming pathogens😂?” <br><a href="https://infosec.exchange/tags/virology" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>virology</span></a> <a href="https://infosec.exchange/tags/taxonomy" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>taxonomy</span></a> <a href="https://infosec.exchange/tags/InfectiousDisease" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>InfectiousDisease</span></a><br>Original: <a href="https://www.statnews.com/2025/01/09/virology-new-scientific-names-for-hiv-covid-19-in-updated-viral-taxonomy/" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="ellipsis">statnews.com/2025/01/09/virolo</span><span class="invisible">gy-new-scientific-names-for-hiv-covid-19-in-updated-viral-taxonomy/</span></a><br>No paywall archive link: <a href="https://archive.is/gckam" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://</span><span class="">archive.is/gckam</span><span class="invisible"></span></a></p>