In the pages of Memórias, for more than a century

Memórias do Instituto Oswaldo Cruz is not the oldest scientific journal in Brazil, having been preceded, for example, by Gazeta Médica da Bahia, which was created in 1866 but has had long periods of inactivity in its editorial trajectory. Except for the years 1969 and 1977-1979, when no article was published, Memórias do IOC, as we know it today, is the longest lasting and most successful scientific publishing initiative in all of Latin America in the area of Tropical Medicine and Parasitology, having achieved broad international recognition as one of the journals that published important scientific contributions. For instance, the discovery of American trypanosomiasis, known as Chagas disease, in reference to the researcher at the Oswaldo Cruz Institute, Carlos Chagas, who described it in a very detailed article published in August 1909.⁽¹⁾ Other examples were the publication of the first isolation of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in Brazil (1987, Bernardo Galvão Castro and Collaborators),⁽²⁾ and more recently during the Zika epidemic in 2015, when an article by researchers from Fiocruz Paraná and Rio Grande do Norte Federal University reported the first case of autochthonous transmission of the Zika virus in Brazil (2015, Zanluca and collaborators).⁽³⁾

The 115th anniversary of the Memórias do Instituto Oswaldo Cruz, celebrated in April of this year, reminds us on important episodes in Brazilian republican history, particularly those with implications for public health. As if it were a witness to "Prima e Completas", the pages of the Memórias do IOC, through the language of biomedical sciences, recorded many of the transformations that were imprinted on Brazilian society throughout the 20th century. These pages contain reports of expeditions from north to south of Brazil (and also to neighbouring countries such as Bolivia and Paraguay), undertaken by researchers from the Instituto Oswaldo Cruz. They inform us about the results of epidemiological surveys, such as the one carried out on Leishmaniasis and published in 1937, among whose authors we find the first woman to sign an article in the Memórias do IOC, Maria José Von Paumgarten.⁽⁴⁾ Many years later, in 1969, she and her husband Leônidas de Mello Deane would be included in the list of professors from the Department of Parasitology at the School of Medicine of the University of São Paulo who were dismissed and forced into exile by the military dictatorship. After the redemocratisation of Brazil, both returned from exile in Venezuela and were hired as researchers to work in the old protozoology department of the Instituto Oswaldo Cruz-Fiocruz. Leonidas Deane would also be the editor of Memórias do IOC between 1986 and 1989, in the new phase of the journal after it was rescued from its editorial paralysis by Prof José Rodrigues Coura, who had been both Director of IOC and editor of Memórias in the early 1980s. Also in 1969, 10 researchers from the Oswaldo Cruz Institute were dismissed by the military dictatorship, resulting, among other drastic consequences, in the interruption of the editorial activity of Memórias do IOC during that year.

In the pages of Memórias we can also be informed about the "march towards progress and the interiorisation of Brazil", which the dictatorship of Getúlio Vargas promoted in its effort to industrialise and build an infrastructure to modernise the country. This can be inferred from an article published in 1944, which presents the report of the team led by researcher César Ferreira Pinto on the sanitary conditions of workers employed in the construction of the Rio-Bahia highway (currently BR 116), stretch of Governador Valadares, in Minas Gerais State.⁽⁵⁾ In this report, as in several others published in Memórias do IOC between 1910 and 1960, we are introduced, in a raw and detailed manner, to aspects of the deep Brazil with their immense social inequalities and degrading health conditions. These aspects are also summarised in black and white pictures. For example, in the above mentioned article we read the description of a 14-year-old patient, a worker who occupied a low position in the hierarchy of jobs in the construction of this road: the “pinante”, the carrier of water and food to the workers on the front line of the road. The boy, in the César F Pinto's words, was a “true treatise on the pathology of parasitic diseases”: he was simultaneously infected by Plasmodium falciparum, P. malariae (which causes malaria), Schistosoma mansoni (schistosomiasis), Necator americanus (hookworm; “opillation” in the original text), Ascaris lumbricoides (ascariasis), Trichuris trichiura (whipworm). In this report we also learn about the "Indian" (the designation used in the original text) Aratimbó Camacan, another worker on the road construction who was infected with P. falciparum and who would receive an intramuscular injection of "Atebrina Bayer", a therapeutic alternative for those who were intolerant to "quinine salts" (hydrochloride or sulphate). These were the medicines used at that time to treat patients with malaria. Aratimbó Camacan was probably a remant of the indigenous ethnic groups that had long inhabited the Rio Doce, Mucuri and Jequitinhonha Valleys in Minas Gerais. These ethnic groups, e. g., the formerly called Botocudos (Aranã, Mokuriñ, Pojixá, Krenak, Porokun), Maxacali, Xakriabá among others, were deeply affected from the 19th century onwards by commercial and exploratory adventures in the “Minas Gerais forests”, among which stands out the one initiated, in 1847, by Téofilo Benedito Otoni, who imagined creating a connection between the north/northeast of Minas Gerais and the extreme south of Bahia,⁽⁶⁾ through the Mucuri River (the river of the skunks, in the indigenous version). But that is another story…

The pages of the Memórias do IOC also provide us with a panoramic view of the changes in the language used in scientific communication. In the article published in 1944 by Cesar F Pinto,⁽⁵⁾ the change in the way research data is written and presented is clearly visible when compared to contemporary standards. The rules for publishing, and the precautions and permissions for the public disclosure of data from patients and research subjects are much stricter today. There is now a set of legal and ethical regulations that control the disclosure and use of such data. In the article above mentioned, all patient data (name, age, gender, address, clinical condition, daily clinical monitoring, and photographs without anonymisation) were made fully and freely available to anyone who wanted to consult and use them, without any restrictions or recommendations. In addition to this aspect, there is another one that would be in flagrant contrast with the “good scientific communication practice” currently advocated: the use of words and expressions that are currently considered derogatory, prejudiced, or simply unacceptable. Fortunately, conventions for scientific writing that respect the cultural and ethnic diversity of research subjects, as well as a series of standards that define “good practices, ethics and integrity of scientific research” have been proposed and  disseminated among both the people who generate scientific knowledge and the institutions that finance them. Memórias do IOC have also recorded the periods of intense collaboration between research groups in Latin America in the search of solutions for problems exclusive to countries in the region. One initiative in particular was full of symbolism and challenges, namely the network of researchers and Latin American institutions brought together in the “Parasite Genome Network” project, supported by the Tropical Diseases Research (TDR) program of the World Health Organization (WHO). This network was organised to sequence the genome of, among other organisms, the parasitic protozoa Trypanosoma cruzi and Leishmania braziliensis, the causative agents of Chagas disease and cutaneous leishmaniasis, respectively. The symbolism refers mainly to the fact that in the August 1909 issue of Memórias do Instituto Oswaldo Cruz, Carlos Chagas reported the technical, experimental and clinical details of the new “human trypanosomiasis”, its causative agent and transmission vector.⁽¹⁾ Therefore, for Fiocruz and Brazil as well, carrying out the complete sequencing of the T. cruzi genome would mean fulfilling a knowledge cycle initiated by Carlos Chagas in 1909. This and other objectives are recorded in some articles published in the issue of vol. 92(6), Nov/Dec 1997.^{(7,8,9,10,11,12)}

The challenges and financial hurdles in achieving this goal have largely overshadowed the symbolic impact of this initiative, i. e., the construction of a cooperative effort by Latin American science to solve its own problems. In 2005, the sequencing of T. cruzi genome was finally published in an article in the journal Science (USA), but this was carried out by a consortium of researchers from the USA and the European Union, largely financed by agencies in these countries.⁽¹³⁾ The participation of Brazilian researchers and other institutions in Latin America in this work was only as intermediate collaborators. Rereading the papers published in vol. 92(6) of the Mem Inst Oswaldo Cruz on the Parasite Genome Network leads us to the disturbing thought: we were so close to completing the work begun by Chagas in 1909 and we did not manage it…

For the coming years, the scenario for Memórias do Instituto Oswaldo Cruz and other scientific journals published in Brazil is no less challenging. The Science Technology & Innovation Strategy currently underway in Brazil does not offer adequate incentives for researchers to submit their best scientific work to so-called “Brazilian” journals. Even if these journals achieve indexes compatible with those required for international visibility and qualification, as is the current case of Memórias do IOC and other important journals such as the “Revista da Sociedade Brasileira de Medicina Tropical” and the “Anais da Academia Brasileira de Ciências”, the widespread perception in the academic-scientific community in Brazil is that our main research funding agencies will indirectly “penalize” research groups that decide to prioritise journals published in Brazil. In our view, this is a mistaken attitude, since countries that have established themselves as “important generators of new knowledge” have at least two or three internationally recognised journals that serve as “flagship” of their respective sciences. Unfortunately, the formulators of the National Strategy for Science, Technology and Innovation insist on a process of “internationalisation” of Brazilian Science that underscores our scientific publishers and their respective journals. This uninspiring scenario is compounded by innovations (or ruptures) in scientific communication. The emergence of pre-publication repositories (“preprints”), the consolidation of procedures known as “open science” (broad access and unrestricted use of the content of published scientific articles, including data, methodologies and devices), real-time digital technologies, social media, and the avalanche of artificial intelligence, pose enormous challenges for scientific journals and their sponsors. Before addressing any of the above items in isolation, those ones responsible for scientific journals need to answer an essential question: who does scientific communication serve and what is its purpose under the current model of “articles published with peer review in prestigious journals”? The answer to this question obviously requires a lot of evidence and reflection on the role of the Governments in the generation of scientific knowledge, but especially here in Brazil, it is necessary to put first and foremost those who actually support all this effort: the people who pay taxes. They must say whether or not they are satisfied with the return on the use of scarce resources…

Adeilton Brandão
Editor in chief, Memórias do IOC

REFERENCES

1. Chagas C. Nova tripanozomiaze humana. Estudos sobre a morfolojia e o ciclo evolutivo do Schizotrypanum cruzi n. gen., n. sp., ajente etiolojico de nova entidade morbida do homem. Mem Inst Oswaldo Cruz. 1909; 1(2): 159-218. https://doi.org/10.1590/S0074-02761909000200008.

2. Galvão-Castro B, Ivo-dos-Santos J, Couto-Fernandez JC, Bongertz V, Chequer-Bou-Habib D, Sion FS, et al. Isolation and antigenic characterization of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in Brazil. Mem Inst Oswaldo Cruz. 1987; 82(4): 453-6. https://doi.org/10.1590/S0074-02761987000400001.

3. Zanluca C, de Melo VCA, Mosimann ALP, dos Santos GIV, dos Santos CND, Luz K. First report of autochthonous transmission of Zika virus in Brazil. Mem Inst Oswaldo Cruz. 2015; 110(4): 569-72. https://doi.org/10.1590/0074-02760150192.

4. Chagas E, da Cunha AM, Ferreira LC, Deane L, Deane G, Guimarães FN, et al. Leishmaniose visceral americana. (Relatorio dos trabalhos realisados pela commissão encarregada do estudo da Leishmaniose Visceral Americana em 1937). Mem Inst Oswaldo Cruz. 1938; 33(1): 89-229. https://doi.org/10.1590/S0074-02761938000100010.

5. Pinto CF. Um ano de combate às doenças parasitárias que atacam os rodoviários da estrada Rio-Bahia, 1942 a 1943. Mem Inst Oswaldo Cruz. 1944; 40(3): 209-340. https://doi.org/10.1590/S0074-02761944000300001.

6.  da Silva WF. Empreendimentos comerciais e a “questão indígena” nos sertões de Minas Gerais (1847-1860). Em Tempo de Histórias. 2011; 18: 65-78. https://doi: 10.26512/emtempos.v0i18.19890.

7. Degrave W, Levin MJ, da Silveira JF, Morel CM. Parasite Genome Projects and the Trypanosoma cruzi Genome Initiative. Mem Inst Oswaldo Cruz. 1997; 92(6): 859-62. https://doi.org/10.1590/S0074-02761997000600023.

8. Santos MRM, Cano MI, Schijman A, Lorenzi H, Vázquez M, Levin MJ, et al. The Trypanosoma cruzi Genome Project: Nuclear Karyotype and Gene Mapping of Clone CL Brener. Mem Inst Oswaldo Cruz. 1997; 92(6): 821-8. https://doi.org/10.1590/S0074-02761997000600018.

9. Ferrari I, Lorenzi H, Santos MR, Brandariz S, Requena JM, Schijman A, et al. Towards the Physical Map of the Trypanosoma cruzi Nuclear Genome: Construction of YAC and BAC Libraries of the Reference Clone T. cruzi CL-Brener. Mem Inst Oswaldo Cruz. 1997; 92(6): 843-52. https://doi.org/10.1590/S0074-02761997000600021.

10. Brandão A, Urmenyi T, Rondinelli E, Gonzalez A, de Miranda AB, Degrave W. Identification of Transcribed Sequences (ESTs) in the Trypanosoma cruzi Genome Project. Mem Inst Oswaldo Cruz. 1997; 92(6): 863-6. https://doi.org/10.1590/S0074-02761997000600024.

11. Zingales B, Pereira MES, Almeida KA, Umezawa ES, Nehme NS, Oliveira RP, et al. Biological Parameters and Molecular Markers of Clone CL Brener - The Reference Organism of the Trypanosoma cruzi Genome Project. Mem Inst Oswaldo Cruz. 1997; 92(6): 811-4. https://doi.org/10.1590/S0074-02761997000600016.

12. Degrave W, de Miranda AB, Amorim A, Brandão A, Aslett M, Vandeyar M. TcruziDB, an Integrated Database, and the WWW Information Server for the Trypanosoma cruzi Genome Project. Mem Inst Oswaldo Cruz. 1997; 92(6): 805-9. https://doi.org/10.1590/S0074-02761997000600015.

13. El-Sayed NM, Myler PJ, Bartholomeu DC, Nilsson D, Aggarwal G, Tranet A-N, et al. The genome sequence of Trypanosoma cruzi, etiologic agent of Chagas disease. Science. 2005; 309(5733): 409-15. doi: 10.1126/science.1112631.