Recently in an opinion piece in Authors Journal, I claimed that science is not popular. I said this because even though vaccines and antibiotics have greatly improved our health, most people do not understand that without them many of us would die before 40. The precise history of vaccines is difficult to know, but the concept is centuries old.

The second generation of vaccines was introduced by Louis Pasteur in the 1880s, who developed vaccines for chicken cholera and anthrax. During the 1900s vaccines became a matter of national prestige and compulsory vaccination laws were passed in Brazil. Yet vaccines were not easily accepted then or now. Oswaldo Cruz, a medical doctor, microbiologist and scientist was born in São Paulo-Brazil in 1872, studied two years in France. When he returned to Brazil he wanted to control outbreaks of smallpox, bubonic plague and yellow fever, but was opposed by Brazilian doctors, who did not believe mosquitos were the cause.

But the rise of smallpox in 1904 brought strong support of Rodrigues Alves, President of Brazil, and he decreed a forced vaccination. The reaction among the people against compulsory vaccination was strong, including dissent from the media, Congress and the Army, and what followed was a “vaccine revolt” that lasted in the streets for a week.

However, things changed. In 1907 yellow fever was fought in Brazil through vaccination and when small pox became epidemic in 1908 the population asked to be vaccinated. Oswaldo Cruz resigned some years later and died at 44 years in Petropolis. Today yellow fever still appears in Brazil. From December 2016 to May 2017, 792 cases were confirmed. So the disease has not truly been eradicated.

One might think that this is ancient history, but Italy and France had have faced measles outbreaks in recent years. The Italian Parliament last July 28^th voted 296-92 in favor of a new law that will require parents to provide proof of vaccination against measles and nine other diseases, but  30% of Parliament voted against compulsory vaccination.

In France Prime Minister Edouard Philippe announced to the French Parliament on July 4 that childhood vaccines will be mandatory in 2018.He told Le Parisien previously that vaccination against 11 diseases were going to be demanded. Amongst 66 countries surveyed, the degree of confidence in vaccines suggested that the French populace was most concerned about vaccine safety. There are French and Italian parents who are hesitant or decidedly against vaccinating their children.

Science is not popular indeed.

Luiz Antonio Barreto de Castro

Twenty five years ago the Christian Democrat President of Chile Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle invited the most prominent scientific authorities in the world to visit Chile, or, as he called it, the end of the world. In the agenda one simple question: can less developed countries (LDCs) perform long-term science at the same level that developed countries do? Most people attended from the World Bank, AAAs, Japanese and Korean authorities, and many others of the main scientific institutions in the world. I was there, too. The Minister of Science and Technology, Israel Vargas, included me in his team from Brazil.

Implicit in this question was the fact that in LDCs, science and technology is not a priority. This still seems to be the case. The Minister of Finance in Brazil amended the constitution to constrain spending. As an example, the budget of 2018 cannot exceed the budget of 2017, plus inflation. Minister Meireles did not include science and technology as a priority, which would have gotten around the amendment, the way health and education were.

The budget is hurting us in other ways. Institutions linked to the Ministry of Science and Technology are going bankrupt, after the 40% cut in their budget for 2017, including The National Laboratory of Astrophisics, the National Institute of Airspace Technology, The Brazilian Center of Research in Physics and the Emilio Goeldi Museum. All are struggling to pay basic maintenance.

We are not alone. Equador invested US$1 billion to establish the Yachay Tech University and attracted some of the most competent native scientist working abroad. Yet many were fired. In Mexico, President Peña Nieto promised to increase the investment in science and technology to 1% of the NGP. The first three years of Nieto’s term were promising, as investments in science and technology increased to 0.6% of the NGP.  However over the next two years the overall budget in SC&T was reduced to 0.5% of the NGP.

The question is: Is science and technology a priority in Brazil? Except for the investments we made to train our scientist here, the answer is no. We still invest less in science and technology than we should. We must exclude science and technology from the constitutional amendment, combined with health and education. We must also invest 5% of current expenses in science and technology. Finally, we are trying to convince the mayors of two hundred counties that house universities to invest 1% of the taxes received by the county in the universities they lodge. The name of this project is Save the University and may be included in the agenda of the Brazilian Society for the Advancement of Science. This is absolutely necessary, because many important universities are lacking funds from the Ministry of Science and Technology, particularly the State University of Rio de Janeiro and the State University of North of Rio. Graduate programs may be discontinued, which will eliminate the driver for basic scientific research in this country.

Luiz Antonio Barreto de Castro

In my recent opinion piece in Biotechnology Research and Innovation, I called attention for the fact that Brazil invested roughly $25 billion in science and technology in public and private money in 2013, and should invest at least twice as much. The US, for example, invests 16 times more than what Brazil does, and yet the National Growth Income (NGI) in the US is only eight times larger than the NGI in Brazil. The NGI of Brazil and Canada are comparable, but Canada invests 10 times more in science and technology than Brazil. The private sector should invest in science and technology in Brazil twice as much the public sector, which is what happens in most developed countries.

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Education in Brazil should be free. Article 205 of the constitution claims: education is a right for all and a duty of the State. Article 206 IV of the constitution claims: Official institutions must offer free education for all.

What university system do we have in Brazil? We copied a federal system from France, where universities are free for all. We should have instead copied the American system, where there are state universities and students must pay.

In Brazil, federal universities do not resolve federal problems. The Federal University of Rio de Janeiro does not even clean the very polluted Guanabara Bay, a situation that will harm the atmosphere around the Olympic Games. Federal universities in Brazil receive federal money, but the federal budget is shrinking and our universities are getting less and less money. So I see no alternative to students paying to study in Brazil’s universities. Perhaps we’ll need to amend the constitution.

The competition to be a student at a federal university coming from high school in Brazil is stiff. Rich students coming from expensive schools have a better opportunity to enter a federal university. Poor students cannot pay for expensive high schools and then fail to compete at the next level. It is fortunate that we see more public high schools in Brazil that do an excellent job because they attract high-quality professors. These professors aggregate quality to the learning process and increase the opportunities for poorer students.

Yet students that do not qualify for public federal universities have to work during the day and pay to go to private, night schools. Are these schools good? Of course not, but they charge simply what one can pay. Their motto is, roughly: what we charge fits in your pocket. Undergraduates leaving these private schools have difficulty finding jobs. The answer is not more federal universities. What we need to do is financially strengthen the federal universities by charging the students. The rich should pay more, and the poorer should pay less. However, that would be against the Constitution.

In the United States in the nineteenth century it was obvious there was a regional imbalance. Not only between North and South but also between East and West. In Brazil the imbalance is between the Northeast and the Southeast. The per/capita income in the Northeast is half of that of the Southeast. In the U.S. land grant universities were created by the Morrill Act in 1862. The federal government donated land to each state, and proceeds from the sale of that land were used to establish schools or build out school programs.

Universities are not free, though. In California, where I did my PhD, those born in California paid a lot less than I did, or others who were residences of other states before applying. The population of California is then grateful for a splendid, expansive university system. If we look at the best universities in the world, 8 of the top 10 are in the United States, and 52 of the top 100. Many of these are land grant schools. The University of São Paulo is the best Brazilian school; it ranks 131^st on this list.

What is the solution then? Create a land grant state university system more than one century later than it should have been created. States must invest in their universities as São Paulo does, instead of building soccer stadiums. What is the priority in Brazil? Soccer or science? Soccer, unfortunately. That must change.

Luiz Antonio Barreto de Castro

In my previous posts I wrote that Brazil can double its food and feed production without increasing deforestation or further depleting our biomes. I mentioned that Brazil has conservatively 30 million hectares of degraded pasture distributed mostly in the Cerrado area in the south. This is almost the same acreage that Brazil uses for its production of grain and meat in these areas. Today Brazil produces close to 200 million tons of grain and we are the world’s No. 1 meat producer.

However in order for these degraded pastures to recover, EMBRAPA developed a technology that integrated grain production, meat production and forestry. These three components have important roles, and, when integrated correctly, can contribute to the reduction of the greenhouse gases (CO2, methane) that add to global warming.

It would be economically impossible for farmers or the private sector to pay for the recovering of degraded pasture without integrating this effort. The idea is to mix the planting of grain and cattle pasture. First, plant Brachiaria brizantha, which improves the quality of the soil for soybean and corn, which annually are grown in sequence. After three years, convert the land for pasture use, over a period of 1 to 3 years, to receive cattle, which in a degraded pasture would produce almost twice as methane.

The goal is to recover the pasture, because meat generates more revenue for the farmer than grain, and recovered pasture allows for more cattle per area. Yet the grain cycle is equally important, and the shrubbery in the pastures, mainly Eucalyptus, also contributes by converting CO2. Many farms have degraded pasture that has been recovered this way. Using this method, Brazil can be the top producer of feed and food in a couple of decades, and will not increase deforestation.      

Luiz Antonio Barreto de Castro