08/08/2024 – 21:25
The “Força Médica”, which defines itself as the “only right-wing ticket”, won the election promoted by the Federal Council of Medicine (CFM) and will occupy the seats reserved for the State of São Paulo in the 2024-2029 management of the national body. Infectious disease specialist Francisco Eduardo Cardoso Alves will take over as the incumbent and gynecologist and obstetrician Krikor Boyaciyan, as the alternate.
A graduate of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), Cardoso was a prominent name in the defense of chloroquine and other drugs that became known as “early treatment” and “covid kit” during the covid-19 pandemic. He has also criticized the vaccines developed to combat the coronavirus and even called the immunizers “garbage” on social media.
These topics do not appear in the proposals of the slate, according to the document available on the CFM platform. Among the 17 proposals are “combating false science” and “promoting medical debates based on robust evidence”. When asked by Estadão about the inconsistency between the slate’s proposals and the defense of medications not recommended by the World Health Organization to prevent or treat COVID-19, Cardoso responded that the fact that the WHO recommends or not a certain type of treatment or conduct “does not necessarily concern the degree of scientific evidence that the treatment has”.
“There is evidence for and against this drug (chloroquine), just as there are similar situations for practically every type of medical treatment. There are people who defend treatments with no proof of effectiveness, such as cannabidiol, which has only weak to moderate evidence, and use the same discourse to combat other drugs. This is the politicization of medicine. Medical prescriptions cannot have a political color,” he said.
In 2021, Cardoso testified for hours in a packed session of the Covid CPI, where he defended “early treatment” – although he points out that the term is not appropriate – and stated that his team had treated more than 4,000 cases, with “very few fatal outcomes”. This data, to date, has not been published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal.
Cardoso also attacks coronavirus vaccines, contradicting the WHO, the National Health Surveillance Agency (Anvisa) and the Ministry of Health.
During a hearing of the Financial Oversight and Control Committee of the Chamber of Deputies in November of last year, which discussed the mandatory immunization of children aged 6 months to 5 years, he went so far as to say that vaccines “have no proven benefit, do not reduce hospitalizations, do not reduce deaths, do not reduce transmission, neither among children nor among adults”. Studies published in prestigious scientific journals disagree: 303 thousand deaths were prevented in the first year of vaccination in Brazil and 19.8 million worldwide.
“I reiterate my statement that vaccines for Covid-19, despite the immense propaganda in their favor, do not have definitive studies in favor of their effectiveness in preventing infection, reducing deaths, clinical worsening or controlling the epidemic,” Cardoso responded to the report.
Politicization
Another proposal of the ticket is the “fight against the politicization of Medicine”. On social media, however, the ticket bet on the support of Luciano Hang, a businessman with great political activity in recent years, to garner votes.
In 2022, the businessman withdrew from the Senate race. At the time, he stated that he would prioritize his family and business, but would continue as a political activist. In 2023, he was declared ineligible by the Superior Electoral Court (TSE) for economic abuse in the 2020 municipal election.
When asked, the doctor replied: “Since when did showing support from friends and admirers mean politicizing the issue? What political party is Mr. Hang affiliated with? Has he ever run for office? Can’t he support people who are running for office of all kinds? Doesn’t he have the right to his opinion? Can’t he exercise his citizenship? This type of question is precisely the politicization we want to see far from medicine.”
‘Dignity’
The list also proposes the “protection of doctors against attacks on their dignity from any source”. In 2022, Cardoso was convicted of defamation against another doctor, with a three-month prison sentence, which was converted into a pecuniary payment of ten minimum wages. His defense filed a habeas corpus petition with the Superior Court of Justice (STJ), which was denied.
To the Statethe Court of Justice of São Paulo (TJSP) reported that the case is not in the sentence execution phase, because, after “numerous appeals”, the possibility of a conditional suspension proposal is being analyzed. This is a type of agreement between the Public Prosecutor’s Office and the accused, in which he complies with the conditions imposed by the judge and the punishability is extinguished.
“These are completely different issues. The dignity of doctors refers to how the doctor is treated in his or her workplace (hygiene, physical conditions, equipment, safety), how the doctor is treated by the manager, the doctor’s remuneration and the non-exploitation of the doctor’s labor,” said Cardoso.
Investigation
In 2021, the State revealed that Cardoso was being investigated by the INSS and the then Ministry of Economy on suspicion of irregularities in the receipt of sickness benefits between 2019 and 2021.
During this period, he maintained intense activity promoting drugs with no proven efficacy against COVID, including participating in meetings with doctors suspected of being part of the so-called parallel cabinet, a group critical of vaccines and in favor of early treatment that was allegedly informally advising President Jair Bolsonaro’s management during the pandemic.
Despite promoting treatment protocols for the disease, he spent the entire year of 2020 supposedly without dealing with infected people after requesting leave from work in 2019 due to the after-effects of a neurological health problem. Even though his salary as an expert was guaranteed (he was on leave from his position due to his work at the National Association of Social Security Medical Experts), he applied for aid from the INSS as a self-employed doctor, claiming that his illness would not allow him to work in patient care.
Cardoso claims that the information is false and the investigation never existed. State requested updates on the case from the INSS and the Ministry of Social Security, but had not received a response by the time this text was published.
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