The Brazilian Scientific Denialism Through The American Journal of Medicine
(The American Journal of Medicine’s response follows this excerpt)
Misinformation about the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is widespread on social networks in Brazil. Many doctors, journalists, members of the Ministry of Health, and President Jair Bolsonaro spread conspiracy theories on social media that attribute obscure origins of the disease, unproven risks related to vaccines celebrated and desired around the world,1,2 and even promoting prescribing medications without scientific proof,3 all without any concern about the consequences of these disclosures.
To my surprise, the name of this journal and the organization it represents have been involved in this kind of antiscientific movement. From various social network sources, I received a video of a Brazilian journalist who vehemently defends the use of drugs without scientific proof, announcing that science has bowed to his and the Brazilian President’s prescription, using the name of this journal to validate itself. He says that an article published early in 2021 endorses this thesis. Meanwhile, I received a series of challenging posts from supporters of the Brazilian president and other deniers, exalting that science has bowed to the Bolsonaro speech from a scientific article.
In a new and unpleasant surprise, I looked for data from this article on the official website of the Brazilian Ministry of Health, and there were more forceful references to this supposed publication. Available at: https://www.gov.br/saude/pt-br/assuntos/noticias/the-american-journal-of-medicine-defende-tratamento-preventivo-para-covid. Accessed January 15, 2021.
-Heslley Machado Silva, Ph.D.
To read this article in its entirety please visit this link to our website.
The American Journal of Medicine Responds
The Editors of
The American Journal of Medicine (
AJM) are grateful to Dr. Heslley Machado Silva for calling our attention to the Brazilian government’s misinterpretation and misuse of an article published in
The American Journal of Medicine.
1 As noted in Dr. Silva’s commentary, the Brazilian government continues to tout hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) as a cure-all and preventive for Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) infections. The government quotes an article printed in the
AJM in January 2021 but written and accepted more than 6 months earlier and posted on the PubMed website
2 at that time. This article was accepted for publication at a time when scientific information concerning prevention and management of COVID-19 was rapidly evolving. The article begins by emphasizing the importance of preventive measures including facial coverings, sanitization, and quarantining. The authors then discuss 8 agents or groups of agents that have shown in vitro or possible clinical activity against various coronaviruses, including severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). Subsequently, a number of these agents, including HCQ, have been shown to be ineffective or harmful in preventing or treating infection with SARS-CoV-2. The
AJM is one of many publications to call
attention to this evolving scientific information.
3 Despite these new data, the government of Brazil continues to cite “the prestigious
American Journal of Medicine” as proof that hydroxychloroquine can prevent or treat COVID-19. In other words, the Brazilian government claims that the
AJM had given a seal of approval to the use of HCQ. Nothing could be further from the truth.
The
AJM is neither a regulatory agency nor an arbiter of political and scientific disputes. The
AJM is a vehicle of communication employed by scientists and clinicians to report information that is potentially useful to physicians throughout the world. It is completely inaccurate to claim that the
AJM has endorsed a therapeutic intervention. The article that the Brazilian government quotes as “proof” of the efficacy of HCQ was posted in PubMed before studies demonstrated that HCQ does more harm than good. The results of scientific studies are always open to review and revision by later investigation. This was the case with some of the hopeful speculations in the article by McCullough et al.
2 What seemed reasonable last summer based on laboratory experiments has subsequently been shown to be untrue, but the Brazilian government does not seem to have taken account of this widely available new information, as well as the crucial role of face covering, social distancing, and sanitization that are the first recommendations of McCullough et al.
2
Based on the US experience in 2020, this politicization of science should not be surprising.
To read our response in its entirety please visit this link to our website.
These articles originally appeared in the February 2021 issue of The American Journal of Medicine.
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