The Pontifical Academy of Sciences, in organizing a Working Group on leprosy, has complied with one of its objectives, i.e., to render more visible some of the dire human sufferings which need a scientific, cultural and compassionate approach. [...] The new perspectives opened by the use of the armadillo as a model for the disease and the new approaches to the immunology and therapeutics of leprosy, together with the need to obtain an overview of the integration of a cured patient into society, showed me the need to organize the Working Group, whose information report is now published. [...]
Carlos Chagas