An Essay

Unbekoming

Dec 17, 2025

This essay draws on Dawn Lester and David Parker’s What Really Makes You Ill? Why Everything You Thought You Knew About Disease Is Wrong (2019), Forrest Maready’s Crooked: Man-Made Disease Explained (2018), and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s The Real Anthony Fauci (2021). Additional material is drawn from Brazilian Ministry of Health documents and WHO publications.

The Geographic Coincidence

In late 2015, doctors in northeastern Brazil began reporting an unusual cluster of microcephaly cases—babies born with abnormally small heads and underdeveloped brains. The numbers were alarming. By early 2016, the Brazilian Ministry of Health had recorded thousands of suspected cases, concentrated heavily in the impoverished states of Pernambuco, Bahia, and Paraíba. The medical establishment moved quickly to identify a cause: a previously obscure mosquito-borne pathogen called the Zika virus.

The Zika explanation presented an immediate problem. The virus had been endemic to parts of Africa and Asia for decades. It was first isolated in Uganda in 1947. Outbreaks had occurred in Micronesia in 2007 and French Polynesia in 2013. In none of these regions, across nearly seventy years of documented circulation, had Zika ever been associated with microcephaly or other serious birth defects. The symptoms of Zika infection were consistently described as mild: fever, rash, joint pain, conjunctivitis. Most infected people experienced no symptoms at all. The virus was so benign that it rarely warranted medical attention.

Yet within months of the Brazilian outbreak, public health authorities declared with increasing confidence that Zika caused microcephaly. The CDC announced in April 2016 that “enough evidence has accumulated to conclude that Zika virus infection during pregnancy is a cause of microcephaly and other severe fetal brain defects.” The World Health Organization declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern. Athletes withdrew from the 2016 Rio Olympics. Pregnant women across the Americas were advised to postpone travel. Billions of dollars in research funding were mobilized.

The regions of Brazil reporting the highest concentrations of microcephaly cases shared another characteristic that received far less attention. These same areas had been subjected to intensive pesticide spraying programs. The campaigns targeted mosquito larvae in drinking water supplies and involved chemicals known to be teratogenic—capable of causing developmental abnormalities in fetuses. The geographic overlap between heavy pesticide use and microcephaly clusters was striking. It was also, for the most part, ignored.

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What Actually Causes Birth Defects

The World Health Organization’s fact sheet on congenital anomalies contains a revealing admission: “Although approximately 50% of all congenital anomalies cannot be linked to a specific cause, there are some known genetic, environmental and other causes or risk factors.” Half of all birth defects have no identified cause. The medical establishment does not know why they occur.

Among the causes that are known, toxic chemical exposure features prominently. Teratogens—substances capable of disrupting fetal development—include pesticides, industrial chemicals, heavy metals, certain pharmaceuticals, and radiation. The WHO fact sheet itself acknowledges that “maternal exposure to certain pesticides and other chemicals, as well as certain medications, alcohol, tobacco and radiation during pregnancy, may increase the risk of having a fetus or neonate affected by congenital anomalies.”

The endocrine system regulates reproduction, growth, and development. Chemicals that disrupt endocrine function can interfere with these processes at concentrations far below those traditionally considered toxic. Dr. Theo Colborn’s research on endocrine-disrupting chemicals demonstrated that hormones operate at parts per trillion. Traditional toxicology assumed that the dose makes the poison—that smaller amounts mean smaller effects. Endocrine disruptors do not follow this rule. Tiny exposures during critical windows of fetal development can produce permanent damage.

A 2009 study published in Acta Paediatrica titled “Agrichemicals in surface water and birth defects in the United States” found a significant association between agricultural chemical exposure and congenital anomalies. The researchers noted that “there is a growing body of evidence that agrichemical exposures may contribute to birth defects.” Glyphosate, organophosphates, organochlorines, and other pesticide classes have all been linked to developmental abnormalities in peer-reviewed research.

The CDC’s own guidance for women planning pregnancy includes advice to “avoid toxic substances and other environmental contaminants, harmful materials at work or at home, such as synthetic chemicals, metals, fertilizer, bug spray.” The irony is substantial. The agency that declared Zika the cause of microcephaly also advises pregnant women to avoid precisely the kinds of chemicals that were being sprayed in the affected regions of Brazil.

Viruses, by contrast, have no established mechanism for causing the kind of developmental brain damage seen in microcephaly. A virus is a particle of genetic material in a protein coat. It lacks the biological machinery to directly interfere with the complex hormonal signaling that guides fetal brain development. The leap from “virus detected in some affected pregnancies” to “virus causes developmental brain defects” required ignoring decades of research on teratogenic chemicals while embracing an unprecedented causal claim about a virus previously considered harmless.

Two Factors Converged

Northeastern Brazil in 2014 and 2015 experienced two significant public health interventions that preceded the microcephaly outbreak. Both involved introducing potentially harmful substances into the bodies of pregnant women. Neither received serious investigation as a possible cause.