The answer to this question is, Not exactly. Yellow fever never left Brazil. I earlier wrote that Oswaldo Cruz eradicated yellow fever in Brazil in the 19^th century. In fact the extraordinary work done by Cruz focused on yellow fever in urban areas in Rio de Janeiro, but the illness persisted in the jungles.

Basically, there are two kinds of yellow fever. The virus is absolutely the same in both, an arbovirus, but the vectors are geographically different. In the forests the vector is mosquitoes of the genus Haemagogus and Sabethes, and they acquire the virus from monkeys and transmit to humans entering the forests. The monkeys also die of the disease and thus are an important indicator of the presence of yellow fever.

In urban areas the vector is Aedes aegypiti, the same mosquito that transmits the virus that causes dengue, zika and chikungunya in cities.

The issue is that today’s urban areas and forests have boundaries that are more confluent than in the past. Brazil now has 90% of its population in urban areas. People go into the forests, get contaminated by the vectors that acquired the virus from monkeys. Once back in cities, the Aedes vector transfers the virus to others. In Brazil, 846 people have confirmed yellow fever, and 260 have died as of early March, and the number is growing all the time. The Minister of Health says we do not have epidemic occurrence of yellow fever in urban areas in Brazil. Deaths occurred so far because people are contaminated in the forest and may die in urban areas. In fact these are considered sylvatic yellow fever in nature.

Brazilians initially understood the threat from yellow fever, and many sought out the vaccine. Soon the demand outstripped the supply, and vaccines began to be given out at doses one-quarter of the usual amount. It works, but protects for only ten years. Campaigns have been established to vaccinate millions, particularly in the State of São Paulo, and there the supply was adequate because many thought the vaccines could harm them and others didn’t believe yellow fever could cause their death.

Vaccines in Brazil are produced in eggs, an old technology. This takes six months and people allergic to eggs cannot be vaccinated. We need to begin producing vaccines in plants as Medicago is doing in Canada located in Quebec for influenza.

A safe and effective vaccine against yellow fever exists, and some countries require vaccinations for travelers. In areas where yellow fever is common and vaccination is uncommon, early diagnosis of cases and immunization of large parts of the population is important to prevent outbreaks. Once infected, management is symptomatic with no specific measures effective against the virus. Death occurs in up to half of those who get severe disease. In 2013, yellow fever resulted in about 127,000 severe infections and 45,000 deaths, with nearly 90% of these occurring in African nations, according to  Wikipedia.

Also, we have been waiting four years to begin using commercially in Brazil the GM mosquito developed by Oxitec Brasil that has the headquarters in Piracicaba in the State of São Paulo. So far Oxitec Brasil can only release the GM mosquitoes experimentally , celebrating contracts with  the government of counties. This is  because ANVISA, which in Brasil is equivalent to FDA, has not registered the GM mosquito to be released commercially. CTNBio, the Biosafety Commission, approved the release of the GM mosquitoes in April of 2014. It is possible that Aedes does not transmit yellow fever as well as it does dengue, zika and chikungunya. But the problem of yellow fever in urban areas will increase if the population of Aedes increases, and that can be prevented by the GM mosquitoes developed by Oxitec Brasil.

Luiz Antonio Barreto de Castro

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.

Continue reading →

Part I

A lot has been written recently about the new government in Argentina and its conflicts with the scientific community.  Nature has run several articles (1, 2), and the more I read, the more I feel there is an elusive truth to tell.

I will briefly mention the relationship between the Ministry of Science, Technology and Productive Innovation (MINCyT) and the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET), because it is crucial to understanding the underlying conflict. CONICET supports the majority of full-time researchers in Argentina and, although it is autonomous and has its own budget, it formally depends on MINCyT. CONICET researchers are mainly financed by the council’s grants, which are relatively low and are called PIPs and PIOs. The large grants for basic science are called PICTs and these are awarded by the National Agency for the Promotion of Science and Technology (ANPCyT, also called The Agency).

Does this sound confusing? Well, it is. The Agency was created in the ’90s to separate the grantors from the grantees. In real life, the scientific community in Argentina is small and, although external reviewers are called, most of the peer reviewing for the PICTs is performed by Argentine scientists. Only 30% of scientists are awarded PICTs, and frequently the same groups receive them. Yes, The Matthew Effect reloaded. Bear in mind that PICTs are actually loans from the World Bank and other international organizations (in other words, they are debt).

This year, the budget for CONICET rose 47%, but the overall funding for the scientific system decreased. How is this possible? In Argentina, cold numbers alone cannot begin to describe the situation. We are a country with annual inflation rates in the 30-40% range, with no reliable inflation rate statistics since 2007. Inflation indices were first manipulated by the Kirchner government in 2007 and only a few influential scientists came forward to demand that this wrong be redressed. Thus, the current 47% budget hike is actually more of a 7% increase because inflation rates were close to 40% in 2016. If there is any good news, it’s that the new government decided to put an end to fake statistics, and at least we know we’re facing budget restrictions.

But let’s go down Memory Lane for a while. The PIPs and PIOs I described above went unpaid for quite a long time, leaving an extended trail of unfunded or under-funded scientists. This was particularly hard in 2015, because, as a top administrative official confided to me, “It’s an electoral year, so we are strapped for funding.” Take my case: I was granted a PIP in 2011, and was supposed to receive 12,000 pesos every year for three years. In 2011, the 12,000 pesos were equivalent to $2,800/year.

That’s not much money for someone working with plant cell cultures and molecular biology, right? But things got worse. The remaining 24,000 pesos were deposited between 2013-2015. When you consider that the peso was devalued in 2014, my 24,000 pesos were no longer worth $5,600, but $2,500.

Here’s another variable: there were restrictions for buying foreign currency, and the result was the rise of a black market. By the time I received the last 12,000 pesos, they were no longer worth closer to $800. To add insult to injury, the majority of our consumables were price quoted in dollars.

These grants were never corrected by inflation because, officially, there was no inflation and no foreign currency restrictions. In Argentina we called this everyday life. Many labs were struggling to survive.

This is all in the past. What is it like now? In my next blog, I’ll write about the present state of affairs, which is far from perfect. I get the feeling many Argentine scientists are stuck in a bad romance with the previous administration.

Sandra Pitta