@article{4c7544774bda4f99b45bf2255dc60958,
title = "A land filled with mosquitoes: Fred L. Soper, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the anopheles gambiae invasion of Brazil.",
abstract = "The success of Fred Soper and the Rockefeller Foundation's International Health Division in eradicating the anopheles gambiae mosquito from Northeast Brazil was a significant watershed in the history of malaria control. It revived faith in vector control strategies and paved the way for the application of eradication methods in the fight against malaria following World War II. Yet Soper's achievement needs to be re-examined from a wider analytical perspective that takes account of the longer epidemiological history of malaria in northeast Brazil and the wider social and economic context within which malaria occurred. This wider perspective suggests that the origins of the 1938/39 malaria epidemic were much more complex than Soper acknowledged. By focusing narrowly on the anopheles gambiae mosquito and its eradication. Soper failed to understand this broader context. This myopia, in turn, permitted Soper to make claims for both the scale of his achievement and its importance for the future of malaria control which were unjustified.",
author = "Packard, {R. M.} and P. Gadehla",
note = "Funding Information: thank the Foundation for research grants which enabled each of us to visit the Foundations' Archives Center in North Tenytown, New York. Finally, we wish to thank Liene Franca Barbosa, Assistant Researcher at Casa Oswaldo Cruz, and Jose Policarpo de Araujo Barbosa who has written a dissertation on the history of public health in Cear{\'a} and assisted Dr. Gadehla with local sources. Funding Information: 29. This implication is based on descriptions from contemporary reports as they relate to the changing systematics of vector identification and the comments of Deane on the main vectors in the northeast (Deane 1986). 30. Annual Report, 1939, p.15. RF, RG 5 Series 3, Box 113. 31. As J. Austin Kerr notes in his {"}Introduction{"} to Building a Health Bridge, Soper had earned money to pay for his education by selling books and stereoscopic slides during summer vacations and also throughout two school years, {"}The boy was father to the man in regard to salesmanship-for Dr. Soper devoted much effort to {"}selling{"} the public health projects in which he eventually became involved. The sales to the Rockefeller Foundation, to governments, and to international organizations involved the funding to initiate new pioneering projects and to support ongoing ones (p. x).{"} 32. F. Soper, {"}Anopheles Gambiae 1941{"}memo enclosed in letter to R. B. Fosdick, January 21,1942. RF RG 1.1, Series 3051, Box 16, folder 141. 33. Soper to Fosdick, January 9, 1941,RF, RG 1.1, series 3051,box 16, folder 141. 34. Soper to Fosdick, January 9, 1941,RF, RG 1.1, series 3051,box 16, folder 141. 35. A. J. Warren to Fosdick, January 15, 1941,RF, RG 1.1, series 3051,box 16, folder 141. 36. Many of the arguments of this paper could also be applied to the history of Super's subsequent efforts to eradicate A. gambiae in Egypt in the 1940s. Here again the mosquito was attacked without reference to the broader social and economic conditions which contributed to a wide",
year = "1997",
month = may,
doi = "10.1080/01459740.1997.9966138",
language = "English (US)",
volume = "17",
pages = "215--238",
journal = "Medical Anthropology",
issn = "0145-9740",
publisher = "Taylor and Francis Ltd.",
number = "3",
}