Brazilian court fines Covid-19 early treatment advocates US$11 million

The Federal Court of Rio Grande do Sul sentenced the advocates of early treatment against Covid-19 to a fine of R$55 million (US$11 million) for collective moral damage to health.

The decision was released this Thursday (25) by the Federal Public Ministry (MPF).

The prosecution filed two lawsuits against the group Doctors for Life and the companies Vitamedic Pharmaceuticals, Alves Faria Educational Center, and the José Alves Group (GJA Participações).

The MPF claims that the group, which identified itself as “Brazili’s doctors of early treatment”, encouraged the consumption of drugs supposedly without proven effectiveness that would be part of an “early treatment”, and encouraged self-medication.

The material was advertised to the general population under the title “Covid Kit”, contrary to the legislation and normative act of the National Health Regulation Agency (Anvisa) that deals with the advertising and publicity of medicines.

In the Court’s decision, the collaboration between Vitamedic and the Associação Médicos Pela Vida (Doctors For Life Association) was proven, with the confirmation of the company’s director in testimony to the parliamentary inquiry commission, CPI of Covid, in the Federal Senate, that he invested R$717,000 in advertising the treatment.

“It is evidenced that the ‘pro-life manifest’ was an illicit mechanism of propaganda of the laboratory manufacturer of medicine, serving the defendant the sad role of a stooge for improper purposes and violators of fundamental value, the protection of public health.”

“[…] The only and pure illicit publicity of medication, due to the risks of its irrational use, already represents an affliction to public health, and its essentiality imposes the due compensation”, noted the magistrate.

The decision also affirms that Anvisa had a “mistaken action” and “omission” in the inspection of the “early treatment”, having avoided all the time to apply its norms about medicine advertising.

However, it states that the amount of compensation in the sentence exceeds what could be imposed by the Agency.

“Therefore, the judge understood to have lost object to the part in which the MPF asked Anvisa to take the appropriate measures to exercise its police power and punish undue advertising,” said the MPF.

The report sought the people cited in the decision but have not yet commented.

OVER 2,000 DOCTORS SIGNED A MANIFESTO

The Doctors for Life group emerged at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic to ensure that patients had the option of early treatment, in-home treatment so that they would seek healthcare only after symptoms had developed.

In 2021, the group published a manifesto signed by 2,122 physicians.

It cited scientific and clinical evidence to advocate using a cocktail of drugs to prevent patients from progressing to more severe stages of Covid-19.

Among the research cited by the manifesto was a survey conducted by 23 scientists in one of medicine’s most prestigious journals, The American Journal of Medicine, which stated that not a single drug but a set of drugs would have been effective in some cases in preventing further hospitalizations and deaths.

“The early approach is not only about the use of one or another drug, but the correct combination of medications such as hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, bromhexine, azithromycin, zinc, vitamin D, anti-coagulants, among others, besides corticoids that have a right moment to be used in the inflammatory phases of the disease, always observing the adequacy of the combinations to the state and evolution of each patient, who will be followed extensively including the performance of tests as needed, and the recommendation of non-pharmacological interventions, such as physiotherapy, said the manifesto at the time.”

According to the group, using the cocktail of drugs would decrease the number of hospitalizations, reduce the burden on the hospital system, prevent post-infection complications, and reduce the number of deaths.

With information from Gazeta do Povo

News Brazil, English news Brazil, Brazilian Judiciary, Covid-19