LIANE NEVESHis father wanted him to be a doctor. He sat the university entrance exam for that career but was not approved. But he passed in the exam for natural history at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), a course that was the doorway to the area of biology in the decade of the 1940’s. His father did not insist on the idea of directing his son’s professional choice and allowed him to follow his pathway. During his third college year, the young man flirted with zoology before falling in love with another field of study: genetics. Thus began, some half a century ago, the long career of Francisco Mauro Salzano, today 78 years of age and for the second time the president of the Brazilian genetics Society. Author of more than 1,000 scientific articles and texts, without mentioning the technical books or those directed towards the public layman that he has written, the scientist, a member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences for more than three decades, has supervised 80 master’s and doctorate students.
Better known for his work on the indigenous populations, especially with the Chavante Indians of Central Brazil, Salzano has made inroads into (and is still making inroads into) various branches of genetic research, touching upon questions of human evolution, of the arrival of man in the Americas and even on the area of medicine. This is a man, to say the least, of forthright and polemic opinion. He says, for example, that the biological concept of human races exists, yes, and should not be abandoned. And says that the term eugenics needs to be made relative. Salzano is also a ferocious critic of those opposed to transgenics and research with human embryonic stem cells. “Currently there are groups that not only attempt to ignore science, but look to make it hostile”, says the professor, who spoke with Pesquisa FAPESP in his office at the Genetics Department of the UFRGS. Below are the most representative parts of the interview with the veteran geneticist:
What led you to your interest in genetics more than fifty years ago?
My father was a doctor, having been the director of the Secretariat of Health here in the state, and was interested in me following in his career. But while I was studying at high school, medicine didn’t provide much enthusiasm for me.
Why were you not enthusiastic?
To deal with illnesses was not really my desire. When I was at the end of the course and should have sat the university entrance exam, I had more interest in the problems of teaching in the area of biology. So I sat two entrance exams: one for medicine and the other for natural history, the name given at that time to biology. I passed in natural history and “flunked” in medicine.
And really that was what you wanted…
It really was. From thereon I began to get involved in natural history. I liked the course, and my father didn’t insist that I should re-sit the medicine entrance exam. Consequently I was studying natural history. At that time, I had been much more enthusiastic about literature and the cinema than science. But, when I arrived in my third year, I examined my conscience and…
The course lasted three years?
The bachelor degree was three years, and a further one year for licentiate. So I thought: I’m going to graduate now and I know very little about the subject. This was when we organized a study group, a zoology study group, which was my weakest subject. At that moment in time I had come back toSão Paulo, where I took a trainee course under the supervision of professor Antonio Rodrigues Cordeiro, who was interested in genetics.
Which year was this in?
In 1950. Professor Cordeiro saw our interest and said: “You people are studying zoology? It’s genetics that’s truly the real thing…”.
He was already selling his pet subject…
He invited myself and a colleague who had been studying with me to be trainees in his laboratory. It was love at first sight. The emotion that I had on seeing the drosophila flies, so extremely small, one flask after another! What we were doing was very elementary, so called cross-breeding: passing the flies of one breeding flask to another.
At that time the structure of DNA was unknown. What were you yearning for with genetics?
In reality, Brazilian genetics had been founded, in the final analysis, by threeSão Pauloprofessors: André Dreyfus from USP’s Biology Department, Carlos Arnaldo Krug from the Agronomy Institute of Campinas, and Friedrich Brieger from the Luiz de Queiroz Upper School of Agriculture (Esalq) in the town ofPiracicaba. This began in the decade of the 1940’s; but during the decade of the 1930’s some of Krug’s studies were coming up. But it was really from the start of the 1940’s that these three centers began to develop. During this period professor Theodosius Dobzhansky, at the invitation of the Rockfeller Foundation, came toBrazil. He was a Russian, naturalized American. He was interested in the biology of the tropics, as he had worked in this area in the northern hemisphere, and the Rockfeller was interested in sponsoring research inLatin America, specifically in biology. An exchange program was set up betweenColumbiaUniversityinNew Yorkand USP’s General Biology Department. It was through this program that Cordeiro went to theUnited Statesand spent a year working with professor Dobzhansky and various others. They were working with drosophilae, which was the model of that era.
What were the objectives of these studies?
Right from the start, the focus was the genetics of populations. This is, questions of evolution and of micro-evolution, the genetic modifications within a species and which factors influence this variability. Up until today I’m still working with this question.
Your doctorate degree was about the drosophilae?
Yes. It was with this material that I researched my doctorate degree. At the end of the 1950’s I was a voluntary trainee in professor Cordeiro’s laboratory, which already had a strong exchange program withSao Paulo. Cordeiro had managed, with [Crodowaldo] Pavan, who was the main coordinator and assistant of professor Dreyfus, that a more experienced person should do specialization inSão Paulo. But the person chosen gave up at the last minute and went on to do medicine. The vacancy was left over and the possibility arose that I, a recent graduate with only three or four months of unpaid traineeship, could obtain the USP rectory grant.
The grant was passed on to you.
But Pavan said: “The young man seems promising but, as he’s recently graduated, the grant will be divided among three people”. The grant was five of something (I can’t remember the currency of the time). I would receive two, Isaías Raw (today at the Butantan Institute ) also two and a Chilean was going to get one. Pavan also said that I wasn’t to think that I was a martyr to science, since science has to be done in this way, the researcher has to suffer. I went toSao Pauloand remained there a year.
During this time you had made your choice for the university life and research?
Exactly. For research. Next I studied for my doctorate at a distance. I carried out my field work and laboratory analysis here inRio Grandedo Sul and defended my thesis in 1955 there at USP, having professor Pavan as my supervisor. One of the members of the examining bench was professor Dobzhansky, a light in science, one of the creators of the so-called synthetic theory of evolution, up until today a paradigm. As we were going to perform collaborative work with the people fromSao Paulo, I remained another year after my doctorate carrying out this research. In 1956 I went to theUnited Statesand did my post-doctorate work for one year, then changing to human genetics, which was the field that had been springing up. Before that, it had been considered that human genetics was not promising from the scientific point of view.
Why not?
Firstly, because the lifetime of a human being is very long. Secondly, because he has few children. Thirdly, because one can’t carry out experiments (with him).
LIANE NEVESIt was complicated to study man…
For this reason they gave preference to these other experimental models. But what made human genetics really take off was the creation of new biochemical techniques for the analysis of genetic material. They opened up new perspectives. With them it was possible to study our species with a degree of information that was much greater than that with the drosophilae.
I imagine that the publication of the structure of DNA must have given a tremendous boost to genetic studies.
Dobzhansky had already said that DNA was probably the genetic material. This statement way back in the decade of the 1940’s, beginning of the 1950’s. But the molecular part of genetics was only introduced intoBrazilyears later, when we democratized, shall we say, the methodology, which prior to that had been very expensive. The technique called PCR, in which there is a multiplication of the DNA, considerably facilitated molecular analysis and, starting from the decade of the 1980’s, opened up prospects forThird Worldpeople to also investigate.
Were the genetics of the indigenous population of Brazil already of interest at that time, yes?
In theUnited StatesI worked with professor James Neel, who, at that time, was with the Human Genetics Department (of Michigan University). I spent a year learning the techniques and analytical methodologies. When I was ready to return toBrazil, I discussed with him what the possibilities of working here were. He advised me, and I immediately agreed, that derived African and European groups could be studied much better in Africa andEurope. But with the American Indians no. They must be studied here, inAmerica. Thus, already back in 1957, I planned to delve more into the indigenous Indian groups. And this is what I did. During 1958 I carried out my first field trip here inRio Grandedo Sul, and afterwards, gradually, we went extending the work to the rest of Brazil, ultimately with special focus on the Amazon. Until today we’re continuing with this interest, but not only with me. Over this time, I also took an interest in the urban populations ofRio Grandedo Sul and ofBrazilas a whole as well as the question of pathological variability.
What were your most important pieces of work?
I generally call attention to the population structure model that professor Neel and I developed, which had attempted to explain how the migrations of indigenous groups or of hunting and collecting groups in general had taken place. According to the model, fissures and fusions between the indigenous groups occurred over time. The population fusions happened according to biological kinship lineages. A group, more or less genetically related, leaves one village and sets up another.
Something like a father, mother, children, uncle and cousin leaving and setting up another village?
Exactly. This fission, this separation, doesn’t happen by chance. This group that migrates has a genetic condition that is more homogeneous than that of the original village. Afterwards, this group is going to merge (or not) with another group. Consequently, we’re considering the dynamics of fission and fusion itself of the hunting and collecting groups, which are more or less nomadic. This dynamic is basically different from that which occurs with farming groups, which are fixed, have a large number of children in order to look after the land and the population centers are highly diversified. Among farmers, there is not this type of fission/fusion that occurs with the hunting and collecting groups. All of this is reflected in genetic variability.
To what sense?
In an isolated and endogamous group there will be a loss of genetic variability and, throughout the diverse population centers, there will be a differentiation, let’s say, X. Whereas, in a group that frequently separated and after re-joined, the maintenance of genetic variability is a lot easier than that of isolated groups. This population structure has an influence on its genetic variability. This is an important point.
When exactly did you begin working with the Chavante Indians?
My first field trip was in 1962. Since that era we’ve made genealogical surveys of the Chavantes, and different groups of researchers, some linked to us, others more independent, are continuing the study of this population. The Chavante Indians are a very rare case of a tribal population about which we have all of their genealogical information, on fertility, mortality, for approximately the last sixty years. This type of information makes possible a series of important studies from the genetic and epidemiological points of view and also provides an opportunity to supply support to these people. In some cases these people have a medical/epidemiological situation much worse than urban populations.
In your studies with Indians, did you also work with anthropologists? Was there not a lot of conflict between genetic people and those in the humanities area?
There was a series of problems, but the principal shock that there was happened with a American journalist who accused, in a frontal and personal manner, professor James Neel of having been inclusively responsible for the deaths of a large number of a tribe’s Indians, those of the Yanomami.
This story came out in a book some years ago (Darkness in El Dorado: How scientists and journalists devastated the Amazon), published by the journalist Patrick Tierney, who accused the researchers of having brought about an outbreak of measles that had led to the deaths of many Indians in Venezuela.
Exactly. This case resulted in another book published by professor Anna Magdalena Hurtado, who is a Venezuelan and lives in the United States(the work entitled, Lost paradises and the ethics of research and publication, published in 2004 by the Oxford University Press). In this book, we refuted, item by item, all of the slanderous accusations of this journalist.
The case of the Yanomami gained certain repercussions in the press.
A little no, a lot. I had to testify two years ago at the Justice Procurator’s Office, since there had been a lawsuit there in Roraima related to the blood sample collections carried out in that state. I had to inform them that I did not receive money from theUnited States, which proved that none of the research damages the indigenous population and so on and so on.
Is it easy to form a multidisciplinary team of researchers to work with the Indians?
One needs to choose well your team of colleagues. Every type of interdisciplinary team or multidisciplinary team can have problems. One has to take care and to be prepared for, eventually, alternative interpretations (to your own) coming forward. But, in general, I believe that I never had a greater shock. At the moment there’s the classical discussion about the peoples of theAmericas. Walter Neves [an USP archeologist] states that there were at least two distinct populations, first a non-mongoloid, similar to Luzia, with primitive traits, and afterwards a mongoloid group colonized theAmericas. Our group has another model.
Are the two theses incompatible?
Our group – which includes Maria Cátira Bortolini from UFRGS, Sandro Bonatto from PUC-RS, Fabrício Santos from UFMG, and the Argentinean professor Rolando González-José – has developed a new attempt on the synthesis of the colonization of theAmericas. According to our model, the morphological difference of Luzia would be considered as making up part of a one only large colonizing group, which would have entered here some 20,000 years ago. When one takes into consideration that there could have been a large genetic and morphological variability within a single group, it is not strange that some people, such as Luzia and others, presented distinct traits. We disagree with Walter, but always within a scheme of mutual respect. He is a very close friend, but exaggerates a little.
As well as the studies with the indigenous populations, would you like to highlight another of your contributions to genetics?
We also discovered a type of human hemoglobin, one of the most varied proteins of our repertoire. Depending upon this variation, the hemoglobin can bring about greater or lesser repercussions on the human physiology. We discovered a very curious type of hemoglobin, calledPorto Alegrehemoglobin, because it was identified here in the decade of the 1960’s. This hemoglobin has a series of peculiar characteristics that occur due to the mutation of a single amino-acid. In the individual it doesn’t manifest itself, doesn’t bring about anything. But, if it is placed in a test tube, this hemoglobin tends to polymerize and groups itself together. This is a very curious molecule, which indeed served as the model for the investigation of the process of polymerization in itself, independent of hemoglobin.
How did you find this type of hemoglobin?
It basically occurs in people of European descent. It was a curious discovery. We were interested in investigating the variability of hemoglobin in African descendant individuals, among whom is the most frequent Sickle Cell Anemia . Myself and a technician were in a kindergarten run by nuns only for children of African descent inPorto Alegre. We began to collect material from the children until at the collection queue appeared two white boys, to use the classical IBGE term. The technician then asked me: “Professor, shall we collect from them as well?” I replied: “Let’s collect from everybody so that these two boys don’t feel discriminated against”. And it was in one of these white children that we discovered the mutation.
How do you evaluate genetics in Brazil?
Genetics, to a certain point, was privileged in relation to the other branches of science inBrazil. Right from the start, it had links to other international institutions. It was always, more or less, in a good situation. Due to changes of paradigms, especially in investigation techniques, there was an oscillation in terms of the insertion of Brazilian genetics within the international context. We have a very large dependency on the question of consumables, reagents. Currently we’re relatively good, but we’re not at the cutting edge. at the cutting edge is theUnited States, followed byEurope. But there are areas of genetics in which we’re doing important work, internationally recognized.
LIANE NEVESWhich areas would you highlight?
The work on the sequencing of the bacterium Xylella fastidiosa, with international repercussions, is a classical example. Our work here in the south ofBrazil is also highly recognized. In general, we’re good in the part of evolution and in medical human genetics. In the more applied area, we don’t have much knowledge. But in this area what is important is that applied inBrazil and not abroad. So I would say that, if we’re not at the cutting edge, we’re within the group of top countries that carry out research in this area.
In your last book, DNA e eu com isso? [DNA and myself with this?] (publisher Oficina de Textos), you criticized the detractors of transgenics and research using human embryonic stem cells. For you, is there no ethical problem with this type of research?
Concurrent with the fantastic development of genetics, there has been appreciable progress in bioethics. This term didn’t exist 20 years ago. Currently there’s a network of organisms that are watching any ethical divergence there might be, firstly, identified and, in the majority of cases, avoided. All current research is submitted to an institutional bioethics commission. If there are doubts about the character of the research, it’s submitted to a national commission. In the case of transgenics, institutional and national entities have verified if the application of a determined product is or is not valid, if it can cause some harm to the population and so on. Currently there are groups that not only attempt to ignore science but look with hostility towards it as well. It is these groups that have to be strongly combated.
You’re referring to the creationists?
To the mystics, to the anti-transgenics, to the anti-stem cell groups. It’s mainly these three groups. Transgenics involves a simple genetic technique, much more sophisticated than it had previously been. Man is a subjugating organism. Since we sprung up, we’re been modifying the environment. We’re been operating on nature for some time, but with techniques that weren’t as sophisticated as those of today. But transgenics, in ecological terms, is a lot less damaging that the traditional techniques of genetic improvements. For example, if we want to improve, using the traditional manner, a variety of soyabean or corn, we have to carry out a series of crossings over time in order to pass on the genetic material of one variety to another. The problem is that, in order to improve one characteristic of the plant, we introduce into the soyabean or corn hundreds or thousands of genes of this close species. Using the transgenic technique this doesn’t occur. We make use of one single gene, a small segment of DNA, of one species and we introduce it into the variety that we want to improve. In this case the possibility of any damaging problem occurring to man or to nature diminishes fantastically. This is without mentioning the time that one gains with the transgenic in relation to the work of classical genetic improvement.
And in the case of human embryonic stem cells? There is the discussion point about when the life of the embryo begins…
The question is when the right of a person begins. The spermatozoid has life, the egg has life. The position of the Catholic Church, which is not universal, is that the person’s right begins at fertilization, when there is the potential of a human being. But one thing is potential; another is the realization. The Catholic Church itself, years ago, had described the right of a person, and therefore the right of life, to occur at birth. Saint Thomas Aquinas, who was one of the exponents of the Catholic Church, stated that the rights of a person initiate at birth. All of this uproar in relation to frozen stem cells in fertilization clinics, in vitro, is absurd. When the cell-egg (the union of the spermatozoid with the egg) forms itself, the probability of this product coming to turn itself into an individual in itself is very small. The reproduction process in the human species is very inefficient. More than half of this product is eliminated in the highly precocious phase of human development. Thus there is no guarantee that this egg is going to produce an individual. This is the first point. The second is that this grouping of cells that are in formation can’t be considered to be an organism in itself because it doesn’t have a conduction axis that commands its reactions. All of the commands of how those cells are going to adjust themselves come from maternal cytoplasm factors. There is even a third point. In this precocious phase there is no indication that one, two or three individuals are going to be born. The formation of five people instead of one could occur. One can’t forget that the opposition of the Church is also linked to the question of abortion, the question of when the embryo, the fetus, has the right to life. The Catholic Church’s position is opposed to that of organizations such as the World Health Organization, according to which this right only comes about when the fetus has the possibility of life at least partially independent, which only happens around the sixth month of pregnancy. Before this, it can be considered as part of the maternal organism. Indeed, the mother will have the right to dispose of this material the best way she thinks fit.
Always when one speaks of genetic advances, someone brings up the phantom of the manufacture of armies of clones, eugenics. How do you reply to this criticism?
Reproductive cloning is a completely crazy business. It’s extremely complicated. It’s much easier, much more enjoyable to make babies by the natural method. It’s impossible to imagine that one could mount a factory for producing an army of clones, even with all of the progress that science has been making. Reproductive cloning only makes sense for couples with problems. There, indeed, it’s ethically acceptable.
But, in the future, can it not be that the parents can design their children, perhaps with blue eyes, with the help of genetics? What would the limit of occurrence of this type of situation be?
The limit is knowledge. Probably we’ll never reach the level of knowledge that would permit designing a person in such a detailed manner. But it’s like that: if a person has a 4 year old son, he’s not going to put him in whatever school. He’s going to look for a school that brings on the child to the maximum of their intellectual ability, personality. Why therefore is there such resistance towards the idea of also bringing about in the child the best genetic material possible? If a parent can make the effort so that his child’s environment is the best possible, why can’t he do the same with the child’s genetic material? Lots of people think that genetic material has got to come about by chance. This is absurd. One thing is life. Another is the quality of life. To say that a person with a genetic abnormality, no matter what type it was, has the quality of life equal to other people without this problem is to come up short. To speak about eugenics has become an insult, something horrendous. But this needs to be put into relative size, to see until where people can influence and to where they cannot. We know that indigenous Brazilians had killed their children who were born defective, something that was natural within their cultural context.
But culturally today this measure is difficult to be accepted by us.
This is true. However, for their culture this was perfectly acceptable. To what point can we go to what is acceptable and what is not is fundamentally related with the principles developed over time, principles that also have to be modified whenever people obtain new knowledge. Knowledge is power. This is a phrase that people continually hear. Thus knowledge has to be applied. If I know that a child will be born anencephalic and, even then, prohibit the couple from interrupting the pregnancy in a precocious stage due to ethical, moral or religious principles, I’m doing something that’s absurd. I know that the child is going to die, no matter what, on being born. Why make the couple suffer for a long time until the birth of their child? For what reason is it going to be born and then die? This has no meaning.
From the genetic point of view, it still possible to speak of human races?
Race is another term that has become loathsome, due to the exaggerations of political correctness. Race is a clear biological concept, which is worthy of all organisms, not only for the human species. It’s obvious that, when two populations separate, they begin to diversity one from the other. Whilst there is no reproductive isolation, whilst these two populations can cross breed one with the other, they are races. At the moment when they can no longer cross breed one with the other, they are considered species. This is a classical concept, neutral, which has nothing to do with discrimination or racism. But, in the commotion to make the horror of racism no longer exist, many geneticists and biologists came out with this story that there are no races. This is silly. Logically there are races in the human species. Give me your blood and I’ll tell you, now, with certainty, assuming I have a sufficient number of genetic markers, if your ancestors came from Europe, Africa orAsia. Certainty. Without any exaggeration. There are classical differences that are due to a different evolutionary history. At the heart of the matter, the problem is not a biological difference. It is a social discrimination. This is the key point. Independently from the biological difference, we have to deal with people in an equal manner.
And not deny the biological differences.
It would be naïve to believe that discrimination is going to end if we deny the biological differences. It’s not going to, even because eventually another reason for discriminating will be invented. In Northern Ireland and in other places, discrimination between Protestants and Catholics isn’t based on morphological characteristics. This is basically social discrimination. If we take, by chance, a person from the African continent and another from Europe, only by looking at them we know that they’re different. There’s no point in denying reality only because it could be in itself beneficial for relationships throughout the planet. The fundamental principles are established by the universal rights of human people, by the UNO. Independently from sex, race, religion, people have the same rights. To carry out any type of discrimination is contrary to ethics.
