A ciência brasileira e Síndrome de Cassandra | Natália Pasternak | TEDxUSP

Translator: Natalie Graue Reviewer: Maricene Crus First came the shampoos that directly affect your DNA, which is a somewhat bizarre concept for a scientist since anything that can directly affect your DNA is a mutagen, and mutagenic things are a little scary. UV light directly affects our DNA; it may cause mutations and may cause cancer. So when a shampoo uses this language to promote itself, that is somewhat bizarre.

But the shampoo explains it: every time you wash, rinse, or even comb your hair, you lose DNA. And you don't want to lose it, since DNA is the most important part of your hair. It builds protein, which makes your hair shiny, thick and pretty.

So if you don't want to lose DNA nor cut your pretty hair, you should use a shampoo that replaces your hair DNA. It directly acts in the hair follicle, it enters the cell, and replaces your DNA with plant DNA. Celebrity chef Bela Gil would say, "You can replace your hair DNA with plant DNA, for example, and you will never have to worry about buying hair extensions.

" And we, scientists, didn't say anything, because it was only a shampoo commercial. What is wrong with people buying shampoo with plant DNA? We wouldn't buy it, because we know it's nonsense.

People were being deceived by someone using scientific language to sell shampoo, but, well, it was only shampoo. Scientists are just too busy, writing projects in order to request funding and publishing articles. Let people use shampoo with plant DNA.

Nobody's hair will fall out; plants will not grow on people's heads. Let people use it. Then came the ripe bananas, which have dark spots with tumor necrosis factor and, therefore, cure cancer.

That sounded a bit weird to us because tumor necrosis factor only occurs in animal cells. So the fact that it was found in a banana was almost worthy of a Nobel Prize. We decided to investigate.

Where did this myth come from, that ripe bananas with dark spots cure cancer? We found out that a group in Japan had had the brilliant idea to inject banana extract directly into mice peritoneum. That triggered an immune response in mice, and an increased expression of tumor necrosis factor was observed.

Not in the bananas, in the mice. Someone read the paper, didn't understand a word of it, deduced bananas contained tumor necrosis factor, guessed it was in the dark spots - since necrosis is dark, so that should be about right - and published this brilliant conclusion in the world's most read and popular scientific journal: Facebook. (Laughter) People read that on Facebook, and it became widely known that ripe bananas with dark spots cure cancer.

And we didn't say anything, because it was only a banana. People were being deceived, again, by the use of scientific language, but bananas are good for you, right? Let people eat bananas.

Scientists are just too busy; we couldn't waste time on that. Then came the detox diets. Detox juices!

Books on detox diets. Suddenly this idea that we have toxins in our body which can be eliminated by having kale juice for breakfast was being sold in juice books and guides. Those people were certainly making much more money than our research grants.

Then we started to get a bit concerned. Again, people were being deceived by the use of scientific language to sell products. These products were yielding a lot of money to someone.

Someone was getting very rich on people's ignorance. Should we still say nothing? We have tried; even I have tried.

During a Sunday lunch at my aunt's - everyone has that one aunt - my aunt was on a detox diet. During lunch she told us she was doing a detox diet, drinking kale juice, and had already lost six pounds. I thought it was my duty as a scientist to explain to my aunt and to the whole family how nonsense that was.

So I explained that the detoxification in our body is carried out by the liver. If the liver is not working properly, the person is as good as dead anyway, and kale juice won't help. So I said, "Auntie, you are throwing money away.

" She got a bit angry at me. So she advised me to do something she does every day, which is to sleep with a slice of onion inside the socks. She said the onion cleanses the blood during the night, it purifies you, and if I did that, I'd be a little less angry.

(Laughter) I ended up replying to my aunt that - Well, they never invited me for Sunday lunch again. That's fine, because after I found out what they do with onions, I'm not so sure I want to eat there. (Laughter) And we didn't say anything, because it was only a detox diet.

Nobody would die from drinking kale juice; it's good for you. Then came the pseudosciences, the alternative therapies. They have always been around, but suddenly they were in SUS, the public healthcare system.

Suddenly we had acupuncture, homeopathy - astrology is not covered by SUS but has always been around. We have crystal therapy, flower remedies, reiki, healing by hands, aromatherapy! Aromatherapy is very interesting: if you suffer from sexual insecurity, you can ask your aromatherapist for lemongrass extract.

When you smell the aroma of lemongrass, it will root you, just like grass, and this will make you get a hard-on. Fair enough, if you're not hard, you can't fight sexual insecurity. All of this is currently available at SUS and paid for with the taxpayers' money.

Everyone in this room is paying so people can receive homeopathy at SUS. It's a pseudoscience. Shouldn't we say something by now?

Some of us have tried. We started to write about pseudosciences, explaining that they don't work. A professor of this university has written several articles in a very well-known newspaper, explaining to the population that homeopathy is a pseudoscience, that there is no scientific evidence, that homeopathy shouldn't be in the public healthcare system, that no one should spend money on it.

He fought alone. He didn't get support from the scientific community; the community remained silent. What he gained from those articles in that well-known newspaper were threats of lawsuits made by homeopathic associations.

I asked him, "What now? What if they sue you? What will you do?

" He said that was not a problem, because according to their logic, even if he lost the lawsuit and had to pay damages, he could pay with ultra-diluted money. Here's how it works: he will give them a one real coin, they will dilute it and shake it until it becomes one million reals. Problem solved.

People sometimes ask me, "Don't you think that in the specific case of homeopathy, there's a lobby of the big pharma industry which only wants to take money from people? " Yes! The homeopathic industry only wants to take money from people.

If homeopathy would be banned, as it has been in more developed and enlightened countries like Australia and the UK, what would those people do? Would they all become bartenders? Shake it here, shake it there?

They sure have the shaking skills! The scientific community remained silent while pseudosciences took over SUS and even got grants from our funding agencies. Then one of our research facilities, the only one in Brazil that works with drug development using non-rodent animals, the Royal Institute, was raided and vandalized.

Again, the community remained silent. The Royal Institute was stormed by activists who defend animal rights. Activists who don't know that for every aspirin they took in their lives, a thousand rats died.

Activists who don't know that for every vaccine they gave their children or their pet dogs, a thousand rats died. Nobody explained to those activists that animal testing is necessary and ethical. We haven't spoken with those activists.

After the shock of what happened at the Royal Institute, we tried to speak out. But our response was way too shy compared to the damage that this raid caused us. Then it came.

The queen of pseudoscience and anti-science and bad science: the phosphoethanolamine. And it was born here, in our university; it has been right under our noses for 20 years. Nobody has seen it?

Whoever did see it, kept quiet? Why? Because it was only a madman that was distributing small pills in a country town that was promising a miraculous cure for cancer?

That's it? How many people would have died because they stopped their treatment to take phosphoethanolamine, the miraculous cure for cancer? And the scientific community didn't say anything.

Our silence, my friends, is a high cost to society. Our silence can cost lives. The scientist who sold dreams was far more interesting than any of our attempts to sell reality.

Society embraced the scientist who knew how to speak to it and who sold the hope of a simple cure for a simple disease. Who wouldn't want to believe that cancer is a simple disease? That it has a simple cure in the form of a pill taken three times a day?

You don't need chemotherapy, you don't need radiotherapy, you don't need science. All you need is a miracle. All of that associated with a sensationalist media won the hearts of Brazilians and ended up at the Supreme Court.

We spent ten million reals from our public funds to prove something that any of our undergrad students here knew: phosphoethanolamine does not work. When we thought nothing could be worse than that, the anti-vaccination movement reached Brazil. Brazil, a country which has always been a role model for public vaccination.

Suddenly, upper middle class families decide not to vaccinate their children, putting their children's health at risk, and the health of other unprotected children as well. And we didn't say anything, because we are not used to speaking out, and when we do, we don't know what to say. After the anti-vaccination movement, which was formed based on a myth - a twenty-year-old fraud which persists to date - when we think, "Now it is over, okay, that's enough," creationism comes knocking at our door.

Creationism: something people thought would never happen. Suddenly the state is no longer secular, and science becomes as optional in our schools' curriculum as religious instruction, which was now enacted. Things that would never happen are very dangerous.

History has shown us that so many tragedies happened because people of good will had thought those things were so surreal that they would never happen. Then came the final blow: they cut our budget! No more research funding.

Brazilian science will die. We have no money for research projects, our students have no grants, our researchers will leave, and so will our students. They'll develop new technologies abroad, and we'll have to buy them because we won't be able to develop new technologies in our country.

We remained silent for too long. Only when they cut our budget, the scientific associations woke up. There were marches, protests, letters to the president, we went to Congress -- but it was too late.

And why? We were already affected by Cassandra Syndrome. Cassandra is a character of Greek mythology who had the gift of prophecy.

She could foretell the future. One day, Apollo fell in love with Cassandra, but because she didn't open her heart and refused Apollo's sexual advances, he cursed her, proclaiming that she would be able to tell the future, but no one would believe her. We can foretell the future of Brazilian science if everything remains as it is.

But no one believes us, because we are not seen as reliable. We have never spoken with society, so it is just not used to listening to us. We didn't speak with society, we didn't stand up for the citizens for their consumer rights when they were being deceived by detox diets, by bananas that cure cancer, and by shampoo with plant DNA.

We didn't speak out, we didn't stand up for the citizens for their right to health when pseudosciences were included in SUS and they believed those treatments were effective. We didn't speak out, we didn't stand up for the citizens for their right to public healthcare when the anti-vaccination movement reached Brazil and we didn't explain it is safe and necessary to vaccinate. We didn't speak out, we didn't stand up for the citizens for their right to education when the state was no longer secular and creationism knocked at our schools' doors threatening the teaching of evolution.

We didn't speak out, ladies and gentlemen, when it was needed. And there was no one left to speak out for us. James Stoddart, a Nobel Prize winner, once said that scientists have to take their heads out of the sand and take on their social responsibility.

We have to speak with society. If we don't, if that is our stance, and if we keep our heads buried in the sand, without communicating, without showing that without science there can be no health, there can be no education, there can be no development of the country. If that is our stance, we have to be aware that this stance leaves a part of our body in a rather vulnerable position to take the consequences.

Let's face it: people on the other side are getting hard on lemongrass, so the consequences for us may be rather violent. Thank you very much.