Abstract
Despite having its legitimacy contested during the last decades by animal rights activists, legal experts, and veterinarians who defend the right to life and to treatment, as well as by researchers in health and social care who point out its inefficacy and even its perverse effects as a public policy, the massive “prophylactic euthanasia” of dogs seropositive for Visceral Leishmaniasis (dog culling) is still persistent in Brazil. Based on the analysis of official documents and of the media coverage of certain lawsuits, literature review, and an ethnography of the impact of the outbreak of Visceral Leishmaniasis in Porto Alegre, this paper aims to understand what is at stake in this controversy, considering the discursive aspects of the construction of morals and of biopolitical practices. The existence of two regimes of government of life in the management of canine reservoirs of Visceral Leishmaniasis is suggested: one is thanatopolitical, connected to the public authorities; the second one is an emerging biosecurity apparatus, associated with the pharmaceutical market, and only available for private treatment.
Keywords:
Leishmaniasis; zoonosis; animal rights; biosecurity