Doctors and anti-abortion promote ineffective COVID treatments

Health professionals related to religious entities and “pro-life” groups have aligned themselves with the speech of President Jair Bolsonaro in the dissemination of ineffective remedies to treat Covid-19. They share and promote a common agenda and relate to other denialist organizations such as Doctors for Truth, which influences other countries in Europe and Latin America. This report is part of the Latin American series “Poderes no santos”, which investigates the progress of ultraconservative measures against sexual and reproductive rights in Argentina, Colombia, Peru, Brazil and Mexico.
Gynecologist and anti-abortion activist Raphael Câmara holds a strategic position in Brazil’s Ministry of Health: he is responsible for the management of primary care in clinics and outpatient health centers. The official of the government of Jair Bolsonaro has also been a fierce critic of the confinement measures promoted during the pandemic.
He also acted with medical groups that spread – although without evidence – so-called early treatments for the disease, such as chloroquine, its derivative hydroxychloroquine, and ivermectin, which, despite being ineffective, were widely disseminated by the president himself and his government. 

During the pandemic, some Brazilian doctors who were already active against abortion – which in Brazil is legal in cases of rape, risk of maternal death or fetal anencephaly – incorporated denialist and pseudoscientific discourses in relation to covid-19. Among them are people who make up the ideological base of the Bolsonaro government, for example Raphael Câmara and Mayra Pinheiro – secretary of Labor Management and Health Education – who became known as “captain of hydroxychloroquine” for defending the ineffective use of this drug to combat the symptoms of Covid-19.
Outside of public office, anti-abortion doctors and deniers have used the influence and credibility of their professional titles to spread disinformation on social media, often acting in a coordinated manner in spaces that relate to internationally influential collectives such as Médicos Por La Verdad, which emerged in Spain and spread throughout Europe and Latin America. 
These same groups are linked to religious fundamentalist groups, such as CitizenGo, the platform of the European ultraconservative group HazteOir, which organizes anti-rights campaigns on the Internet, as reported by Agencia Pública in a previous report.

Academic and activist Sonia Corrêa, who coordinates research on anti-gender policies in Latin America, explains that, in Brazil, the correlation between anti-abortion activism and denialism in the medical field is linked to a core of common and conservative thinking. “We must think like an ecology: ideas that belong to the same thinking environment of these Bolsonarist groups where the repudiation of abortion, the denial of vaccines, the defense of early treatments coexist, in different degrees and intensities,” he argues. 
See also: Politicians seeking votes in Brazil distribute false “cure” against COVID-19
Doctors for Life
In Brazil, the best-known group of denialist doctors is Doctors for Life, which shares the same ideals as the Spanish group Doctors for Truth, with a presence in several countries in the region such as Argentina, Peru and Mexico. 
The final report of the parliamentary commission of the Federal Senate of Brazil (CPI), which investigated the alleged omissions and irregularities in the performance of the government of Jair Bolsonaro during the Covid-19 pandemic, notes that this group “proposed the existence of a parallel cabinet” that would lead the pandemic without taking into account the recommendations of the World Health Organization (WHO), as well as advocating for ineffective medications and discouraging mask wearing and social isolation.
This parallel cabinet, made up of doctors and businessmen, coordinated with the Ministry of Health, influencing decisions on the purchase of vaccines and sanitary measures. During this journalistic investigation it was known that the oncologist and immunologist Nise Yamaguchi, a Christian activist, anti-abortion and member of Doctors for Truth, formed that cabinet in the shadows. A chloroquine enthusiast, she was even considered to take over the Ministry of Health in 2020, but even without the position, she was a close adviser to Bolsonaro on the pandemic. 
Nise Yamaguchi participated in a meeting with President Bolsonaro to discuss vaccines and the use of hydroxychloroquine, according to the CPI report, and signed a letter in which he and other professionals from the Country.Health advised against the use of masks and stricter isolation measures, while defending ineffective medicines to treat Covid-19.
Nise Yamaguchi, a Christian, anti-abortion activist and member of Doctors for Truth, has been a close adviser to President Bolsonaro on issues related to the pandemic.
Another signatory of the letter is Hermes Nery, an expert in bioethics and coordinator of the Legislation and Life Movement, which articulates an anti-abortion agenda with conservative parliamentarians in Congress, such as federal deputy Chris Tonietto (PSL-RJ), linked to the ultraconservative Dom Bosco Catholic Center. 
The Legislation and Life Movement is linked to Human Life International, the world’s largest anti-abortion movement, and also to CitizenGO, an ultra-conservative organization from which Wikileaks leaked documents this year.
In addition to acting against the legalization of abortion and in favor of the most conservative agendas, the movement founded by Hermes Nery elaborated, together with Doctors for Life, a manifesto in favor of the non-mandatory vaccinations on the CitizenGO website. He also organized a petition for Senator Eduardo Girão, an ally of the government, to assume the presidency of the ICC. 
Girão promoted a parliamentary proposal that sought to compensate with an economic bonus to women victims of sexual violence who decided to maintain their pregnancy. In a CPI session with the director of the Butantan Institute, Dimas Covas, Bolsonarista Senator Eduardo Girão hinted that the cells used by the health institute for the production of CoronaVac vaccines were extracted from “aborted fetuses,” which was denied by the guest. 
Recently, Hermes Nery has made publications attacking the health passport for vaccinated people and the continued use of masks.
Vaccine with embryonic cells and other false information
The pediatrician and secretary of the Ministry of Health, Mayra Pinheiro, was one of the main spokespersons for the early treatment of Covid-19. The so-called “chloroquine captain” campaigned against abortion in the Supreme Court vote to approve termination of pregnancy in cases of infection during the epidemic of the Zika virus, which causes microcephaly. “We are liberating in Brazil the death of innocents… Say no to abortion! Life yes, respect, death no,” Mayra Pinheiro said in the recording posted by Bolsonarista federal deputy Carla Zambelli.
Mayra Pinheiro also publicized the creation of the group of Christian doctors “Ainda Há Bem”, which mixed abortion and chloroquine in a campaign with billboards in Fortaleza, a major Brazilian capital that is located in the state of Ceará. 
The group’s website was registered in the name of a server in Mayra Pinheiro’s office, and shortly before the campaign was launched, in March of this year, she met with Senator Eduardo Girão (Podemos), who organizes marches against abortion. Girão is a former colleague of the Secretary of the Ministry of Health and also of the Minister of Women, Family and Human Rights, Damares Alves.
Mayra Pinheiro is on the list of people accused of crimes in the commission that investigated the response to the pandemic and that highlighted how the government contributed to aggravating the health crisis. It was responsible, for example, for the federal government system (TrateCov) that indicated chloroquine and ivermectin in cases of probable diagnosis of Covid-19, including for pregnant women and infants. It is also implicated in the increase in deaths from lack of oxygen and ventilators in the state of Manaus, which led to the collapse of hospitals in the Amazon region.
“Imagine that they invite you to a concert of baroque music, and in the theater it is written that they are going to play Vivaldi’s Concerto in D Major, but a group of pagodas arrives. Then, they ask him to comment on how the baroque music concert was. Sounds ridiculous, right? But I say that most people today would agree to listen to pagode and, in order not to be considered a denier, I would say they liked the concert.” With this metaphor, the doctor Djalma Marques begins his participation in a public hearing in the City Council of Uberlândia, in the state of Minas Gerais. 
“We are living in a theater where they invited us to attend a baroque music concert and they are playing pagode,” says the doctor, who is also a musician. 
Presented with an extensive resume accrediting him as an authority at the event, which took place in early October 2021, Djalma Marques triggers comments with alleged technical arguments against the use of masks, quarantine, vaccination and the health passport, a requirement of proof of immunization dose for entry to events such as the matches of football, which was the theme of the public event. 
In Brazil, the doctor is also a member of the doctors for Life association and signed in April of this year the first petition of the movement, which so far collects more than 30 thousand signatures for “early treatment” without evidence. Marques also signed a manifesto sent to the Public Ministry and the Judiciary where they allegedly presented “technical and scientific arguments” against the use of vaccines against Covid-19. 
On June 2 of this year, Marques interviewed doctor Alessandro Loiola, also accused of spreading false information about covid-19, in a live broadcast on Instagram. During the conversation, which lasted just under an hour, Dr. Kefir (username of Djalma Marques on Instagram) called the masks “muzzles” and argued that in Brazil there is not a pandemic, but a “PCR pandemic”, suggesting that it is the tests that are increasing the number of cases of the disease. 
In addition to defending President Jair Bolsonaro, doctors sought to link abortion to vaccines, a strategy already used before by parliamentarians. influencers and blogs by people who defend the Bolsonaro regime in the campaign against immunization. “In there are embryonic cells, fetal cells. I would like to know where they get so many cells from embryos, from fetuses,” Marques said.
Due to denialist posts, Djalma Marques was included in the final report of the investigative commission as one of the profiles propagating fake news on Instagram.
Doctors for truth
Djalma Marques was the one who took Doctors for truth to Brazil. In a video posted on his 2020 profile, he claims to have “fantastic news” about a conference in Spain. And then he says a series of false facts: “Doctors agree on the following points: coronavirus victims do not exceed those who died from seasonal flu last year in the vast majority of countries. Two: medical protocols in different countries have been altered to exaggerate the results. Three: the confinement of healthy people and the forced use of masks have no scientific basis.” None of the three points is true. 
On March 15, 2020, on the second day of quarantine in Spain, an audio of almost six minutes went viral in the country: in it, family doctor Natália Prego affirms that there would be an “emotional and psychological manipulation of the population by the coronavirus” and, ensures that coronavirus infection would not be significantly more serious than infection by the flu virus or measles. Natália Prego is one of the founders of Doctors for Truth and, in September 2020, she registered the trademark “Doctors for the Truth Doctors for the Truth” at the Spanish Patent and Trademark Office (SPTO). On her Youtube channel, with almost 15,000 subscribers, the doctor presents Portuguese versions of her videos, reaching audiences in countries such as Portugal, but also in Brazil. 
Because of their anti-scientific positions, both Spanish and Brazilian groups face legal action. Brazil’s ICC deemed that Doctors for Life “violated the Code of Medical Ethics” and suggested that the facts be investigated; Meanwhile, Doctors for Truth is being sued for having issued a favorable ruling on the use of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine for coronavirus victims.
Against abortion and against vaccines
According to the commission that investigated the pandemic, the Federal Council of Medicine (CFM), the main representative body of doctors in Brazil, is responsible for omission and denialism. Its president, Mauro Luiz de Brito Ribeiro, is among those investigated by the commission. Before this announcement he said that he maintains “his convictions in favor of the autonomy of the doctor and the patient”, arguing that doctors have autonomy to prescribe the drugs they consider most appropriate, even those of unproven efficacy and that can put the lives of patients at risk. 
In July of this year, Mauro Luiz de Brito Ribeiro signed a document in which the Federal Council of Medicine (CFM) positions itself against telemedicine abortion, which was approved through an ordinance during the pandemic, when access to hospitals became more restricted. “So that there are no doubts in relation to the case, we inform that this Federal Council is frontally opposed to the performance of the legal abortion procedure through telemedicine and outside the hospital environment,” he said. 
Different websites linked to bolsonaro’s government have been spreading false information about the existence of “cells from aborted fetuses” in vaccines produced against coronaviru.s. Five of them were cited in the ICC’s final report as “propagators of fake news”: Brasil Sem Medo, Conexão Política, Senso Incomum, Jornal da Cidade Online and Estudos Nacionais.
In July 2020, the website Brasil Sem Medo, run by Bernardo Küster – cited by the report as a member of the government’s political core – argued that the “fear of disease has been producing a kind of ‘moral blindness’.” It is not mere genetic material, but human lives that become the object of greed for the industry’s use of disease solutions,” the text argues. 
The website Conexão Política also addressed the issue in an article in which it defends the ineffective early treatment against the disease and points out the existence of a supposed market that encourages the abortion of babies for the benefit of pharmaceutical companies. “The use of cell lines derived from the abortion of innocent babies should not be normalized and legal, financial or market incentives to harvest aborted babies should be removed,” he posted in December 2020. 
In a response to Agência Pública, the website Brasil Sem Medo claimed that the ICC was “a partisan, political and ideological initiative” and that “no website or agency complies with the legal or institutional competence to oversee the journalistic procedure of its competitors.” 
Conexão Política also attributed the inclusion in the ICC report as “ideological harassment for assuming editorial positions of conservative spectrum.” According to the site, “we have never persuaded our audience to believe that new babies are aborted.” Finally, the media said that it defends that “offering the vaccine is the most effective way to overcome the current health crisis”, but that this “does not prevent raising issues such as ethical debates, religious concerns, the arbitrariness of the State and individual freedoms”. 
Estudos Nacionais stressed that “we do not consider the ICC to be a legitimate or exempt body” and that the control agencies and Public Agency have “no legitimate function of control over journalists.” He argued that “both journalists and ordinary citizens have the right to suspect that the production of vaccines is associated with the abortion industry” and that “it is the producers of vaccines (and the interested agencies) that must provide clarifications to answer the doubts of the population.”
Report originally published on the website of Agencia Pública
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Original source in Spanish