From ‘More Doctors’ to the COVID-19 pandemic: dual denialism in the Brazilian medical corporation’s performance

Abstract

This essay analyzes the dynamics of Brazilian medical practice’s corporate action in the COVID-19 pandemic, from March 2020 to July 2021, from documents and institutional material of national medical entities, student organizations, groups of nationally reputed physicians, and journalistic articles and scientific literature publications on the subject. This period is marked by the politicization of the corporate agenda and the alignment with the denialist discourses of Jair Bolsonaro’s administration. It is argued that this process stems from a previous politicization: the clash against the More Doctors Program from 2013, the year of its launch, to 2019, when the Government deactivated it. The two historical moments reveal the dual denialism of the medical corporation, emphasizing weaknesses, contradictions, and dilemmas of the profession’s crossroads, which will require internal and social dialogues for a new consensus on corporate identity and the professional project of Medicine. Understanding the intertwining, disputes, and meanings of the dynamics and directions of the corporate action of Medicine allows identifying structural problems of political roots that prevent further advances in the consolidation of the Unified Health System.