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In 1958, the Pan American Health Organization declared that Brazil had successfully eradicated the mosquito Aedes aegypti, responsible for the transmission of yellow fever, dengue fever, chikungunya, and Zika virus. Yet in 2016 the Brazilian minister of health described the situation of dengue fever as "catastrophic." Discussing the recent epidemic of Zika virus, which amplified the crisis produced by the persistence of dengue fever, Brazil's president declared in January 2016 that "we are in the process of losing the war against the mosquito Aedes aegypti." I discuss the reasons for the failure to contain Aedes in Brazil and the consequences of this failure. A longue durée perspective favors a view of the Zika epidemic that does not present it as a health crisis to be contained with a technical solution alone but as a pathology that has the persistence of deeply entrenched structural problems and vulnerabilities.

Debates on human experiments in developing countries focus on ethical principles such as informed consent, accountability, involvement of the concerned communities, and the improvement of local health services. Public health specialists who conducted human experiments in Rio de Janeiro (1902-1905) and in Guatemala (1947-1948) believed, however, that they were acting in the best interests of local populations, were aware of the importance of informed consent, were closely collaborating with local health professionals, and were contributing to the development of local health structures. Nevertheless, their investigations went dramatically wrong. An initial desire to conduct ethically and scientifically sound studies was undermined by pressure to obtain results and to save the researchers' initial investment, the possibility of freely using hospitalized patients as experimental participants, uncritical help from local professional elites, and structural pitfalls of experimenting with severely deprived people. These elements can still be found in trials of preventive methods in the Global South.

In the late 1930s, the 17D vaccine against yellow fever was produced in record time. 17D was and is an excellent vaccine. Its rapid diffusion led, however, to several problems, the most important among them being the 1942 massive contamination of the vaccine distributed to the US Army by the hepatitis B virus. The US part of this story is relatively well-known, but its Brazilian part much less so. In 1940, scientists who were producing the 17D vaccine in Rio de Janeiro found that it was contaminated by an "icterus virus" that originated in normal human serum. They solved this problem through the exclusion of human serum from vaccine production, but failed to persuade their US colleagues to do the same. The Rio experts, aware of the potential pitfalls of a new technology, carefully supervised the consequences of their vaccination campaigns. They were thus able to rapidly spot problems and eliminate them. By contrast, US scientists, persuaded of their technical superiority and distrustful of warnings that originated from a "less developed" country, neglected to implement basic public health rules. A major disaster followed. (Am J Public Health. 2021;111(9): 1654–1660. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2021.306313) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Infection with the zika virus had a great impact not only on pregnant women and newborns, but also on public health, on popular ideas about Aedes aegypti and with respect to women's social rights. The objective of this paper is to identify this impact and the historical, social and health changes of the disease and the legacy of the zika virus. Interventions by researchers from different specialties foster conditions for more comprehensive investigations into future epidemic threats in Brazil and Latin America. This dialogue took place after the seminar "Aedes aegypti: past and future health emergencies," organized by the Casa de Oswaldo Cruz, when we talked with some speakers and other leading researchers about the history and challenges of Aedes aegypti and zika. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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