The political-scientific denialism in the daily work of the medical profession: an analysis based on oral history

Abstract

This article aims to understand why it became recurrent in the professional daily life of doctors and physicians who cared for patients with COVID-19, practices and political positions in tune with political and scientific negationism in the form of the defense and use of early treatment. The methodology used was the production of interviews with physicians based on Oral History, in addition to specialized literature and primary written sources such as newspapers and institutional documents. The interviews were conducted against the backdrop of a dramatic moment in the pandemic characterized by the failure to start the vaccination campaign against the pathogen in question and the consequent uncontrolled growth in the number of cases and deaths. The results of the research allowed us to conclude that, in this scenario, expressive segments of the medical profession, as a professional elite in the labor market at the national level, defended a counter-civilizing agenda in tandem with neoconservative values and flags associated with Bolsonarism. In this sense, some segments of the medical category contributed to the establishment of a historical rupture with a project of modernity founded on the alliance between state and science that it helped to build in the late nineteenth century.