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Read, Debate: Engage.
| topic: | Human Rights |
|---|---|
| located: | Brazil |
| editor: | Ellen Nemitz |
A Brazilian health insurance company is being accused of carrying out unauthorised experiments with COVID-19 patients. The findings of the Parliamentary Inquiry Committee, which is investigating possible crimes committed during the pandemic, indicate that doctors of the firm Prevent Senior were ordered to prescribe a cocktail of drugs made up of chloroquine and other medicines that have now been proven ineffective against the disease.
This drug combination was dubbed the “COVID-19 kit” or “early treatment” by Brazil’s president, Jair Bolsonaro. In addition to this unauthorised treatment, further investigations have shown that some deaths related to COVID-19 were withheld and the results of the experiments were counterfeited.
Backed by the government, the hospitals owned by the Prevent Senior group have supposedly subjected around 600 patients to the treatment without consent - which is prohibited by ethical rules for medical experiments on humans. Moreover, the number of people actually treated with the cocktail is much higher. The journalist Chloé Pinheiro has been investigating the scandal and, during a webinar, described that many doctors throughout the country were obligated by superiors to prescribe the treatment to a certain number of patients; some of them were fired for not obeying, according to documents and messages accessed by the journalist.
The scandal has been compared to the medical experiments conducted by the Nazi regime since patients were not aware of the treatment chosen by their doctors. The Holocaust Museum of Curitiba, in southern Brazil, has released a note disapproving of the comparison, indicating that Prevent Senior’s patients were not being treated in concentration camps nor selected by racial or religious factors. Nonetheless, this case serves as a reminder that the civil protections instated after the Nazi experiments and the later Nuremberg Code must serve as guidelines for ethical medical studies on people.
According to the Museum's note, "any research that claims to be scientific and that breaks the ethical protocols of the Nuremberg Code, be it modus operandi analogous or not to the experiments carried out by Josef Mengele, is violating a fundamental lesson created by of the Holocaust: the development of bioethical principles linked to autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence and justice."
Meanwhile, Jair Bolsonaro's speech at the UN Assembly in New York this September was, for the third time, followed with concern as he spread lies over several issues, including the pandemic and environmental protection - reaffirming his defense of ineffective treatments. Off the stage, the unvaccinated leader went through another embarrassing moment: he had to eat on the sidewalk due to vaccination requirements for entering restaurants.
Almost three years after being sworn in as president of Brazil, the list of human rights violations of which he is accused is long. In the Portuguese written report "1000 days without rights – the violations of Bolsonaro's government," Amnesty International has identified 32 situations that have led to Brazilians' loss of rights, including the mishandling of the pandemic, attacks on the press, anti-rights speeches, withdrawal of indigenous peoples’ rights, human right's violations in the Amazon and a facilitated access to firearms. In the report, Amnesty International "warns that Brazilians are currently losing their lives or suffering from the bad management and neglect that has afflicted the country in these last 1000 days."
Photo by Diana Polekhina
