Extremismo de direita estatal e governança médica: a experiência brasileira durante a pandemia de COVID-19

Abstract

Medical corporations have secured their authority for professional self-regulation from the State and have responded throughout history by way of their scientifically grounded statements which confer rationality to State interventions in the field of health. During the pandemic in Brazil, there was a solid right-wing association between state governance and medical governance that supported a policy to address the pandemic based on scientific denialism, off-label use of ineffective drugs, and the disregard of certain preventive measures, which together were responsible for most of the more than 700,000 deaths that occurred in the country. This article examines the phenomenon of the interaction of these two forms of governance in a context of authoritarian neoliberalism and thus seeks to reflect on the necessary limits to medical autonomy at all its levels.

Keywords

• Brazil
• health policies
• State intervention
• pandemic
• extreme right
• clinical medicine