Scientific policies and ethical economies in the development of vaccines against Zika

The Zika epidemic alarmed international health authorities, who responded by calling for efforts to develop a vaccine. The goal was to produce a biotechnology that would especially protect pregnant women and women of reproductive age, in order to prevent more babies from developing the Congenital Zika Syndrome. In this context, scientists' arguments about the need to include pregnant women in biomedical studies have been intensified as a means of ensuring that this group receives drugs with proven safety and efficacy. Here, we prioritize the perceptions of women from two states in Brazil about their hypothetical participation in a vaccine trial against Zika. Considering their hesitations concerning medical experiments and their hopes for developing a treatment for Zika, we strain the production of biotechnologies based on specific perceptions about body, risk and ethics that neglect the knowledge of the same women they are, supposedly, seeking to protect.