"What woke me from my dreams
was the frequency with which patients treated and cured
were soon returned to be examined with the same infections,
the same malaria, the same worm infections
and the same problems.
More than medical problems,
they were socioeconomic problems I saw in front of me."
"I thought of medicine for the general public
and to reduce the mortality rate
of major endemic diseases, the main health problem in Brazil."
"Everything was going well, until on April 1st, 1964,
Brazil suffered the violent shock of a military dictatorship.
A few days later, I was awakened by the news
that I had been removed from office by the dictatorship,
and that I would be arrested as 'subversive'.
REY, SCIENCE IN DEFENSE OF LIFE
I was born in 1918, the son of immigrants...
Italian mother, Spanish father.
And then I had two more sisters; by the way, twins.
And I started High School at Mackenzie,
but then I ended up going to the State High School of the Capital.
From then on, all my education came from public schools.
So that, although my parents did not have many resources,
this allowed me to complete all my education in São Paulo,
in the State High School and later in the Medical School of USP.
SAMUEL PESSOA, AN INSPIRATION
I was a student of the Medical School,
student of Professor Samuel Pessoa, enthusiastic about his teaching.
Teaching of Parasitology.
Because Samuel Pessoa taught
mixing medical science
and social science,
something that at the time interested half the world.
So we studied Medicine within a sociological context,
trying to find out why the disease occurred.
And in particular, parasitic diseases.
I graduated in 1944, in the end of 1944.
Hospital das Clínicas had good laboratories,
the laboratories were very modern for the time
and the laboratory was used a lot.
We would gather around the patient's bed to read
and discuss the diagnosis.
And then the teacher would ask the questions we hadn't asked,
or what we thought about that,
or he would check if we had good palpation skills,
say, palpating the liver or listening to the heart.
Samuel Pessoa was a talented educator and researcher.
He was, I think of all time,
the teacher who most trained parasitologists in Brazil.
He taught the Deane couple, Nussensweig,
he taught a group that went to Ribeirão Preto, right?
I think Samuel has trained hundreds, dozens of teachers and researchers
who shaped Brazilian Parasitology.
All of us of the department suffered, in a good way,
a strong influence of Professor Samuel Pessoa.
He was, without a doubt, the leader of us all,
not only for his social stance, but for his academic stance.
He was really dedicated to his work, to his science.
He worked much more in the field,
most of his production is fieldwork.
He was not what we've became,
much more turned towards the laboratory.
But Samuel was really the inspirer of the whole class.
And Rey was one of those who strongly developed this.
And his production, his group
was very directed to this part of the fieldwork,
particularly to the area of schistosomiasis.
So, despite of this cutting-edge environment of science in medicine,
we never diverted our attention
of the importance of the great Brazilian endemics,
and the social aspects of medicine.
It was a conciliation between the vanguard of science
and the concern about the health situation of the Brazilian population,
especially the rural population.
And although we, Hildebrando, perhaps Victor, me, Luis Rey,
were very interested in the vanguard of scientific research,
we were also very concerned about the country's overall health situation.
And we tried, more or less, to make a hybridization
between science and Parasitology.
In 1946, I told Samuel Pessoa that I didn't want to do general medicine.
So he told me, "You won't want to work at the health services here,
because they're bad, very poorly organized, they don't work.
But there is a service that works well in the Amazon region.
There's an Amazon Special Health Service
which is a serious service.
If you want, I'll introduce you to the director of the SESP program."
A little in the spirit of adventure,
a little in the will to serve the population
and not the bourgeoisie, I went.
When he graduated in Medicine, he didn't want to stay.
His father gave him a practice, if I'm not mistaken in Sao Paulo,
and he didn't want to stay.
He wanted to see Brazil's interior how the diseases were in the country.
Then I was appointed a doctor at the Gurupá Health Center.
In the Amazon river,
a little further up the confluence with the Xingu river.
My sanitary district comprised three of the largest municipalities in Brazil.
I usually went there,
especially in the epidemic peaks of malaria
I had to treat these people.
I had a boat with four crew members,
I had a lab technician on board
with enough medication
and we went to treat people in the interior.
In the streams, in the canals, in the islands,
and we got in touch with the forest people.
But in the Amazon region
there was an accident that traumatized me a lot.
I once received a child
in a semi-comatose state.
With worms, ascaris, coming out of the nose, mouth, and anus.
I treated the child.
When I come back from one of these trips,
one of my helpers tells me:
"Do you remember that child you treated?"
I said: "Yes."
"She came back the same way.
You weren't here, she died."
That knocked me down...
Of course, I was very impressed by that.
The feeling of helplessness was overwhelming.
Then I said: "No, I need to study Public Health.
I'm a hospital general practitioner, here it doesn't work.
I don't know how to solve this problem."
I stayed there almost two years.
Then I decided to go back to study Public Health,
which was what I was missing.
Because medical schools didn't teach public health, zero public health.
They formed general practitioners.
For private clinics or a large hospital.
So I came back.
But I had a great desire to know Brazil more.
A RED DEPARTMENT
The Parasitology Department had the advantage of being leftist.
As you all know, it was called the "Red Department" of the Medical School.
and the teachers were known as communists,
partisans of the Communist Party.
This has never been a problem at the Medical School.
They coexisted normally, the subject wasn't even brought up.
Political discussions were avoided.
There was no kind of isolation, discrimination,
anything to do with politics in the department.
And so the years went by.
The Medical School was at a very favorable stage.
Science was at a very favorable stage,
that was when the double helix of DNA had been discovered,
the amino acid sequence of the proteins, the endoplasmic reticulum in the cell.
I mean, it was a very throbbing moment in the Medical School.
And we had very frequent, weekly meetings,
about new aspects of medicine.
Later, our meetings would be unfairly accused,
absolutely unfairly, I don't need to hide it from you,
accused of being subversive meetings.
It was nothing like that, absolutely nothing.
It could be subversive to the cultural establishment of the Medical School,
that was very scholarly and very little experimental.
They had that traditional style of teaching
with self-righteous professors who did not question facts through science.
Maybe we were subversive in this sense.
But, politically, I assure you
that we never use the Medical School for any political action.
Except later on, when we were fired.
But that's another story.
We took the teaching very seriously.
That also came from Samuel,
from Luis Rey, from Leônidas...
Everyone was concerned about having the best quality teaching.
And, because of that,
at some point the idea was born,
I can't tell if it came from one of the students,
from the Parasitology Department, the Academic Center...
But I know that Luis Rey was one of the inspirers
of what we have come to call Scientific Flags.
In 1961, the students came to me,
on the summer break, and they said:
"We were thinking of organizing
an excursion to do inquiries in the countryside."
They were very much influenced by our parasitology courses,
they were very motivated.
They wanted to do something not only in the laboratory, but in the field.
Well, I went onboard with that,
they organized the excursion: 36 people.
We borrowed from the Sao Paulo Railways Company
a dormitory car.
And we embarked towards Mato Grosso state,
today Mato Grosso do Sul.
So we went to the cities of Corumbá,
Aquidauana...
I remember that Leônidas took a class to...
Macapá.
Macapá and the Island of Marajó.
So he went to Amapá and the Island of Marajó.
Luis Rey took some people to Pantanal region
and I ended up taking people to the Northeast,
to the São Francisco river region,
and we made the headquarters in Furnas.
We went from house to house,
explained what we were doing,
collected stool samples.
Of course, we distributed the containers one day
and the next day we would collect them.
We took it to a laboratory, a place of our choice,
usually a health clinic, and placed it in formaldehyde.
I wanted people to see these parasitosis, how they were,
and we also visited the economic activities of the region.
So it was a very positive experience.
So positive that the next year we organized another flag.
And I took the students to Rio Grande do Sul state,
to study the problem of hydatidosis in Rio Grande do Sul.
I went by car with my family.
My family stayed by the beach and I went to the endemic zone.
The family decided they would travel together.
So there were two Volkswagen vans of the Scientific Flag
and our car, which was a station-wagon.
And there we went, including my grandmother, my mother's mother.
It was the five of us plus my grandmother.
I was very small, I was 4 or 5 years old
and we went
to explore the surroundings.
When they went to some beautiful or interesting places,
we went along with the students.
Even today, when I bump with one of the students
they use to remember the Scientific Flag.
They use to say: "Professor, that was very important in my life."
And it was really important.
Individuals raised in São Paulo,
with all the conveniences of the São Paulo bourgeoisie,
when they saw that environment, it really was a shock
and a very important learning experience.
A PERSECUTED SCIENCE
Suddenly, on March 31,
we heard the news of the coup.
So, the environment after the coup
began to get much more tense in the Medical School.
And what was not about politics,
about political confrontation, started to be.
Soon after, I think in April or May,
they began in the Medical School a Military Police Inquiry Commission.
To the more experienced guys like me, Rey,
this was no problem.
You didn't have to compromise yourself,
you could simply say you were a leftist intellectual.
You didn't have to go into details.
But for professors who were not linked to us
and who suddenly felt cornered
and accused also,
this was an atmosphere of terror.
And they really were very afraid.
The atmosphere in the Medical School became very heavy,
very heavy.
Until Institutional Act No. 1 was issued
with our lay-off.
I must be there too, somewhere
in this news piece, let me see.
"What they did for science..."
That's it.
There! I was still a boy,
I must have been 24, 25 years old...
Because we were laid off in the last days
of the validity of Institutional Act No. 1,
which was on December 12. Right?
We were home when they called us saying...
"Did you hear the National Time broadcast?"
The Medical School collapsed at that time.
Because it demoralized itself,
it allowed violence against the faculty,
which was absolutely unusual.
The Medical School has always had, historically,
from the time of the coffee farmers of São Paulo, a <i>esprit de corps.</i>
You don't mess with a Medical School professor.
And the military coup broke with that,
and it was a shock to many conservatives.
Of course, Luis Rey, like all of us,
was deeply involved in this, he was removed from office,
and also left the Medical School deeply displeased.
When the case went to the Military Court,
the prosecutor requested the arrest of the defendants.
When I saw this...
It reminds me a song, a samba, that goes like this...
"God gave me a long leg and much malice
to run after the ball and run away from the police."
I bought a ticket
Rio-Caracas-Mexico
and I sent a telegram to Torrealba...
"I'll be there tomorrow..."
I got on the plane and went away.
I remember one occasion when my father was gone,
he had already left Brazil
after AI-1
and one day some guys knocked on my door
that looked...
Anyway...
They looked suspicious.
The guy opened the door, I was little, right?
I answered from the window of the house,
because we didn't open the gate,
we answered from the upper window.
Then he said, "I'm looking for Dr. Luis Rey."
I said, "Oh, he's not at home."
Then they started with a weird talk
and I realized they must be from the police.
So...
I knew exactly what was happening
and I knew I was not to say my father was gone.
Well, an instrument for the Military Police Inquiry
and then for the trial in the Military Court
was an anonymous letter,
as I said, written by a technician that worked with Maria Deane.
It is particularly offensive to all of us.
But for reasons I do not know, it is very offensive to Rey and Dora,
it is very offensive to Hildebrando, to me,
on various subjects, right?
But it's really a letter full of hate
and lies, lies...
Some even quaint, but mostly unpleasant.
The military government created a General Commission of Investigations in Rio.
They received the cases and analyzed them.
And they concluded that the Medical School case
was pure gossip of the old professors against the new ones,
the assistants. And they dismissed the case.
He and my mother decided we would go back.
And we came back in 1968.
Then my father went to work at the Public Health School,
which at the time was called the Hygiene School.
Then we stayed here,
when in 1969,
the Institutional Act 5 was issued.
When I was fired, I continued teaching in Taubaté,
but not for long.
Because soon there was an addition to Institutional Act No. 5,
which said that those who had been removed from offices in the universities
couldn't work in any other school or institution
financed by the government.
So I had to say goodbye to the people of Taubaté.
I was arriving home at that time
and there was a van from the Department for Political and Social Order.
They grabbed me and threw me in the van.
They called home, Dora answered.
It's Erney's wife asking: "Is Rey ok?"
Dora said: "Yes, he's fine. Why?"
"Because Erney is not."
And "Goodbye."
They knew I was arrested, and I think on the same day
Luis Rey left for Switzerland.
And he did well, right?
The disassembly of Parasitology
is not unheard of in the recent history of our country.
Fiocruz, here in Manguinhos, had something of a much larger dimension,
which was not restricted to Parasitology, but took the entire institution,
which was the Manguinhos Massacre.
That is in fact another regrettable episode of Brazilian scientific history.
A PARASITOLOGIST IN THE WORLD
I stayed in Paris, at Luiz's house.
But first I was negotiating, looking for a job abroad.
And in that search
I submitted my application for the World Health Organization.
And I also communicated with Ruth, Victor and so on.
And I told Ruth that I wanted to see if I could get a job at the WHO.
She was very attached to WHO,
because she was in the WHO Malaria Program,
working on the vaccine and everything.
The interviewer was a Russian doctor.
He wondered and said: "But why didn't you wait for the PTA?"
I said: "Do you know what's happening in Brazil?"
He said: "I know."
"That's it. I had to run away."
He said: "Don't tell that to anyone.
Because WHO doesn't want complications with governments.
The interview is done, you can sign the contract."
The incentive for trying to eliminate schistosomiasis in Tunisia
came actually from the government,
and it was to promote tourism in Tunisia
in the late 1960s.
So...
And when your tourists get ill of a parasitic disease,
that doesn't look well.
So, therefore, this program was started in the early 1970s
and Professor Rey was actually the expert
giving advice on how it should be done.
They needed me.
They had to fight schistosomiasis.
So…
in a way, they had to put up with me.
And, in fact, I was able to develop in Tunisia
a medical activity,
as a physician linked to a medical practice...
how would I say?
Left-wing medicine, shall we say.
That was tolerated because they needed it.
So there was a certain...
a certain balance
between my left-wing medicine and the regime.
There had never been a systematic inquiry.
But there was a lot of information,
because many individuals had studied hot spots of transmission here or there.
The main hot spots were known,
but I was the one who established
a research to map the endemics.
So they put me in a jeep with some health officials
and I left Tunis and went to the south of Tunisia.
And we toured some oases where the hot spots of disease were more important.
At first I was a bit scared.
That unusual landscape, that different environment,
different people with different customs.
The oases, which are really ecosystems
absolutely new to me and which I ignored.
So I had to do a sort of survey
on the epidemiology of hematobic schistosomiasis in those conditions.
My problem was as follows:
I either solve the problem of schistosomiasis,
and end schistosomiasis in Tunisia
or schistosomiasis ends with me!
Dad dealt with populations
who were poorer.
The schistosomiasis was not in Tunis, it was in the oases.
They were the people who depended on the wells,
who depended on local irrigations taking water from the oases.
People that washed clothes at the water's edge.
Schistosomiasis was not a problem for those with running water at home.
But Tunisia had important hot spots of transmission.
In some oases in Tunisia, 80% of the boys had schistosomiasis,
80% of boys.
And the girls a little less.
So it was a serious problem, right?
He needed to equip the local labs with microscopes.
And one day, daddy had gone to the Ministry of Health
and was talking to some people.
And he learned that there were old microscopes in a warehouse,
that were not being used. So he asked to see them.
He got there and found 20 or more microscopes,
Zeiss, wonderful,
which were lying there.
He asked the ministry staff if they could donate them,
since they were treated as scrap metal, to the campaign.
And the guys said: "Ok. That's garbage anyway."
"What are you going to do?"
He said: "I think I can sort this out."
He took the microscopes home.
And he dismantled all the microscopes.
And, of course, we stuck next to him to see that.
Today there's Lego, we had microscopes.
He disassembled the microscopes...
then he reassembled them
and he managed to save about 15 microscopes,
or 18 perfect microscopes,
working wonderfully.
We were very happy and people were stupefied.
He didn't spend a penny
and they were actually excellent microscopes.
And in the end he was able to examine
100% of the local populations
because he had team members from the communities.
I treated 11,000 or 12,000 people, I don't recall off the top of my head.
Do you understand?
But for you to treat 11,000 people,
you need to know who these people are.
So you have to examine about 200,000.
This was done with follow-up examinations, year after year,
because you can't do it at once.
So during the four years,
we did a scan operation across the endemic area.
He managed to set up an elimination program
which actually interrupted transmission in just over ten years, in 1981.
And that was due to a combination of treatment
with drugs that were not as good as the ones we have today,
but regular treatment, and snail control.
But snail control both with chemicals,
but more importantly, engineering.
Environmental engineering to reduce the number of snails.
I think the most important thing he did,
besides controlling the disease,
which occurred to a small population,
in a small region, a small country,
is the model he created
which can be repeated in any other country.
And he was in an executive position of the World Health Organization.
He joined these three experiences, which few people have.
A person sometimes is a great parasitologist,
but has no managerial experience.
Sometimes the person knows how to treat,
knows how to make a molluscicide, but doesn't know how to deliver it
and how many times it has to be done and repeated.
They have to assess it, like he did.
He assessed it several times, he went to Tunisia several times
to see if it had actually been done and to prove it.
And I started to get many invitations.
To Africa, to Latin America.
And then, my prestige went up and people would send me...
Whenever there was a hard problem, I was the one who would go.
Mozambique was a very curious country,
different from the other places where we lived.
Because, on the one hand,
they had just...
the people had just won a war of independence,
which was a popular struggle.
So people were very happy,
very euphoric about this achievement
of their independence, of their identity.
You could see that on people's faces.
At the same time, the country was extremely impoverished,
on the one hand,
due to the evasion of people who also took resources.
And, on the other hand, it was a bloody post-war.
What he us told about Mozambique
is that there was a medical course
that had only a few basic subjects, more on the clinical part.
So he said, especially regarding parasitology, which was his area...
"Let's create this subject."
So he created the Parasitology subject out of nowhere.
So he started collecting samples in the field,
protozoa… He observed them and began to teach.
From time to time, a certain area of the country was blocked.
The army would close it due to conflicts.
And if you were developing a study, a research, you had to stop.
It was a very peculiar moment in my parents' life.
A TEACHER
In 1979,
I was invited to go to Fiocruz,
to be Vice President of Research
and director of the Oswaldo Cruz Institute.
We were having dinner at Rey's house.
Until, I think it was the last time I went there,
and he told me:
"In a year I'll have to leave the World Health Organization,
I'll be retiring from there."
And I said: "And what are you going to do?"
Then he said: "I'll write my books."
"I'll write my books."
I said: "No, you're not going to write your books.
You're going to Fiocruz, because I was invited there
and I'm in charge of bringing brilliant minds to Fiocruz."
He was a huge contribution, I would say,
his greatest contribution, besides the books,
because that doesn't depend on his position in Fiocruz,
as I said at the beginning,
is the group that he left and that continues his work,
the development of his works.
We learned that Dr. Rey was coming to Fiocruz,
Luis Rey, everyone was astonished...
I had come from a university of the interior,
and it was the first time I would be in touch
with an author of a book I had studied.
Which was, by the way, this red book about parasitology,
in the first editions, that we had studied in Goiânia.
And I was fascinated...
"Wow, I need to know him. I've never seen the author of a book."
That's when I met Professor Rey, the author of Rey's Parasitology book,
from my medical school time, a book on Parasitology.
Dr. Rey was sitting with me and he asked me what I was doing.
And I had the opportunity to say
I was writing my thesis, a dissertation on Rickettsia.
And to my surprise,
he immediately asked me if I could read the terms
referring to Rickettsia that were in his dictionary,
because he was at the time making a new edition.
And I was amazed, because he was meeting me there as a student
and I was honored.
One of the first characteristics of Professor Rey's personality
that I came to discover, which was very pleasing, was...
this extreme freedom that he, as head of the group,
gave to researchers to carry out their projects.
It is the vision of the WHO: <i>"one world, one health"</i>.
Doctor Rey already embodied it back then.
And that's why he gave us this freedom of expression,
this freedom to work.
So Dr. Rey's lab had doctors,
epidemiologists, parasitologists,
people specialized in public health,
and he had zoologists, ecologists...
So he created a multidisciplinary group
because he already had this broad view of science,
this view of integrating the disciplines.
Rey had
the gift of being extremely didactic
and systematic.
He was extremely thorough in the things he did.
I know, because I participated in his habilitation thesis
and he would write everything down.
I learned even this from Rey.
To do science right, you need to take notes.
It was impossible to attend a lecture by Professor Rey,
focused, themed, on any matter of health,
that didn't have, on his part, a social-political commitment.
The issue of social determinants in health.
He not only contextualized that health problem
on the issue of extreme poverty, poverty, lack of sanitation...
It was obvious, and he always highlighted
that health problems are not solved only with medicines.
There had to be a social transformation.
There had to be an improvement of housing conditions, sanitation.
Rey liked to teach.
Not only in formal classes, but if you asked him something,
"Rey, tell me about the schistosome..."
He didn't mind, he would take a long time
explaining it to you, how it evolved.
"Dad, what is this here?" That was a fatal question to my father.
"What?" So I opened the book,
I would take the most complicated image in the book and say:
"Explain it to me?" That's it.
He sat for hours, sometimes mom would call us to dinner
and there was me and dad sitting there, and dad explaining...
So, I was very young, and I already knew about the structure of atoms,
emission of rays, frequency,
transmission of light, sound, etc.
If you came to daddy and asked for an explanation,
he was going to show you a world of things.
My children are all doctors!
All doctors!
They think: "My father has such a good life
that we better follow his steps!"
AN AUTHOR
Rey writes his books on his own.
He asks colleagues to read it later.
But look at Rey's book, he writes alone.
I was saying, I wrote a book
in two volumes
and I have 302 collaborators.
Rey has a book that is one third of mine,
or better… it's...
more than half the size of my book
and he wrote it alone.
So he is able to write any chapter.
If we assign him, he can write a good chapter.
This is rare,
you need a very complete and complex education, which he has.
There are two books on Parasitology, Pessoa's and Rey's.
There is no other in Brazil.
Samuel said: "Write it."
Because Samuel also preferred that I wrote it
instead of people from other schools in Rio,
from here and there, competing with him!
Dad wrote several scientific books.
So my mother was always the first reader.
He would write a draft and give it to my mother to read,
even before any editing.
And my mother did two things...
In addition to correcting his grammar,
he would say: "Dora, if you don't understand, I have to write again.
Because I want my text to be understood by people,
even if they are not from this specific area."
I used to read his works.
I'd read it and give him insights.
I reviewed them.
And if there was a problem, I would improve it.
You can't teach without a dictionary.
You have to explain your language.
That alone says you need a dictionary.
To do anything, you need knowledge.
If you teach, if you write and everything,
you need to have a way to define your terms.
We depend on words.
Sometimes a student asks:
"What do you think of this?"
I say: "Have you looked it up at Rey's?
Look it up and then we'll talk."
After reading Rey's, they come back much better.
IF IT BE THAT REY DIES
So if you ask me what is their legacy,
besides their personal and scientific contribution,
each of us have our own, and it is different for each one,
is that we have a fundamental concern and a responsibility towards our country.
And Rey left an unquestionable legacy in this sense.
Dr. Rey was a scientist.
A real scientist, with laboratory experience,
clinical experience, and field research experience.
These are the great legacies, the vision of science,
the vision of health problems,
the good spirit with which he faced things.
Like that saying: "We will harden, but never lose our tenderness".
Scientists like Professor Rey have been pioneers and visionaries
shaping what we are doing today,
and also shaping us, who do the job today.
So, in that sense, I think they built a solid foundation
for what we are now able to carry forward.
Professor Rey leaves this legacy.
It's not only the professional aspect, but the aspect of humanity,
of respecting and wishing mankind to be well, healthy.
And health is not only in the sense of being free from microorganisms, parasites.
No, it's about global health, wellbeing, being well, being happy.
And closing it all, the humorous way of seeing life.
And the love for living well.
-Dad! -Hi.
Caring and respect.
It's something I learned from my parents since I was little.
You have to have affection and respect for people, for things,
for the processes, for everything.
There were times when I was a lab researcher.
Other times when I was a field researcher,
doing surveys and everything.
Other times I was a sanitarian, that is, I intervened to modify
the epidemiological conditions or to eliminate a disease in a region.
Other times I was only a professor, a professor of Parasitology.
Other times I was a writer,
as when I was writing about Parasitology,
writing about methodology of essay writing...
So it's very difficult to say what I am.
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