Zika by Donald G. McNeil Read Free Book Online Page A

anyway. My cholera and tuberculosis stories were coming along, but slowly.
    I was poking through piles on my desk and wandering in infectious disease websites like ProMED and flutrackers.com. I had to dig up something to write for my Global Health column, which was due in a few hours. Along with full-length stories, I do something every week for the Tuesday Science Times section. It’s usually short, 300 words or so.
    Cranking it out can be a pain, but it’s also a useful outlet: there are many events or studies that are not big news, but still intriguing. For example, a new vaccine against leishmaniasis made out of sand-fly saliva. (Leishmaniasis causes festering wounds and was obscure until U.S. service members in Iraq started getting “the Baghdad boil.”)
    On Google News, I saw a small CNN story out of Brazil. It had “Zika” in the headline. Remembering the earlier conversation, I opened it—and read with growing horror.
    Brazil had declared a state of emergency. Hospitals were seeing a wave of babies with microcephalic heads, more than 2,700 of them.
    Zika was the suspected cause. The CNN piece mentioned the same facts Dr. Weaver had, but one line caught my eye: some of the country’s top obstetricians, it said, were recommending that women not get pregnant. Another article I found said a health ministry official had advised the same thing.
    That was mind-boggling. Outside of China and its one-child policy, I’d never heard of any government—or any sane doctor, for that matter—recommending that women just stop conceiving. The idea was a betrayal of the whole idea of nationhood.
    I looked at the CDC’s website. It had very little information: a paragraph stating that Zika virus was in Polynesia and South America, and that some cases had been reported in returning travelers. Nothing about microcephaly, nothing about Guillain-Barré. It did have one ominous line: “These imported cases may result in local spread of the virus in some areas of the United States.”
    I called the one person I knew in Brazil, an Italian doctor named Marco Collovati, who ran a diagnostics company.
    A few years earlier, I had written a front-page story about a new rapid test for leprosy, which is a big problem in Brazil. His company had created it. I had interviewed several leprosy experts for it, but not him. Nonetheless, soon afterwards, I found a box on my desk with a ceramic figurine of a Brazilian gypsy. Attached was a note full of exclamation points: it was a thank-you gift. I emailed him to say thanks, but New York Times rules didn’t let us accept gifts worth more than $25. When we spoke, he was effusive. “Dooooonald! You muuust take it! It is nothing! It is a souvenir! They sell them on the street! Your story has made me famous! I am a suuuuuper-hero in Brazil! You are a suuuuper-hero too! You are saving the world!”
    Apparently, my story had been picked up by all the Brazilian media. Soon thereafter, he excitedly sent me a picture of himself on a dais with the very popular former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who was endorsing his test as an example of Brazilian ingenuity.
    Marco was lots of fun, but that day he turned somber. I was incredulous. Was this story true? All these kids? From a mosquito disease? Yes, he said. His company was already working on a rapid test for Zika.
    â€œIt is a big, big mess, Donald. It is a tragedy. These babies do not recover. It is a very big El Niño this year, it is very hot. It is raining already, and it is only going to get hotter. The Olympics—they will be a disaster. Can you imagine people coming from the U.S., from France, into this?”
    Yes, he confirmed, the health ministry had advised women not to have children. “What can they do? Abortion is illegal. So the only way to prevent this is to not get pregnant.”
    And was it definitely Zika?
    â€œIt’s a big question,” he said. “We