ABSTRACT
The city of Recife lies on Brazil's Atlantic coast well northeast of the large cities of Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo (see Figure 14.1). This was the center of a strange phenomenon that began in the late summer of 2015. Babies were being born with abnormally small heads and brains. Their faces were usually the normal size and shape, but the small underdeveloped brains led to severe conditions, including blindness, deafness, seizures, hyperactivity, and others. Many of these babies died. It wasn't just a few cases; the rate was many times what it had been in previous years. Physicians were sometimes seeing several cases per day.
