Judge Gabriel Menna Barreto von Gehlen, of the 5th Federal Civil Court of Rio Grande do Sul (JFRS), condemned an association of doctors and two companies in the health sector to pay a total of R$ 55 million in compensation for having published in newspapers a text in defense of the covid kit, a set of drugs that would supposedly serve as an early treatment for covid-19. The condemned were the José Alves Group (GJA Participações), Vitamedic Farmacêutica, manufacturer of covid kit medicines, and the Associação Dignidade Médica de Pernambuco, which signs a text called Manifesto pela Vida, published in newspapers of great circulation in February 2021 , during the covid-19 pandemic. In the text, the association defends the prescription of a cocktail of medicines – including ivermectin, chloroquine, hydroxychloroquine – as a means of preventing contamination by covid-19, in a kind of early treatment, which would prevent the development of the disease. During the Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry (CPI) of the Pandemic, however, the director of Vitamedic assumed in a statement that it was the company, and not the association, that paid for the publication of the manifesto in newspapers of great circulation, in the amount of R$ 717 thousand . The CPI’s final report also found that the revenue of the pharmaceutical company, which makes ivermectin, increased from approximately R$16 million in 2019 to more than R$474 million in 2020 and R$265 million from January to May 2021. In addition to the ineffectiveness of such drugs in the treatment of covid-19, later proven by scientific studies, and the threat to public health of those who defended the covid kit, the judge concluded that there was veiled and irregular advertising of drugs in the case, in violation of the rules of the National Health Surveillance Agency (Anvisa). Citing the final report of the CPI on the Pandemic, the magistrate wrote that “the publicity promoted by the defendant association – in collusion with the manufacturer of ivermectin – involved serious health illegality”. In another excerpt, the judge stated that, “given the illicit interposition of persons, it is evident that the ‘manifesto for life’ was an illicit propaganda mechanism of a drug manufacturer laboratory, serving the defendant of the sad role of orange for unnecessary and violating purposes of fundamental value, the protection of public health”. He justified the amount of compensation for collective moral damages by stating that “the protected good is the most fundamental of the Constitution, because [é] prerequisite for the enjoyment of all others: life and health”. The magistrate added that “the sole and pure illicit advertising of medicines, due to the risks of their irrational use, already represents a harm to public health and its essentiality imposes due reparation”. At the time of the facts, Anvisa insisted that the Manifesto for Life did not violate the agency’s rules governing drug advertising. For this reason, the Federal Public Ministry in Rio Grande do Sul (MPF-RS) also asked that the agency be ordered to publish an alert to the population about the risks of the covid kit. The judge, however, denied the request, considering that the health situation had changed and that such a retraction would only result in new advertising of the drugs. In the end, he fined Vitamedic and the José Alves Group, owner of the pharmaceutical company, in R$ 45 million, and the Associação Dignidade Médica de Pernambuco in R$ 10 million. Appeals may be made to the second instance of the Federal Court. Another side In its defense, Vitamedic alleged that the sponsorship for the publication of the manifesto was not about irregular drug advertising, since Anvisa itself had concluded that. Only the agency would be competent to analyze the regularity or not of the text, defended the company. The association, in turn, maintained in the process that “it defends the ‘early treatment” because it is the absolute conviction of the professionals who compose it, that said treatment minimizes viral replication and improves immunomodulation, bringing concrete benefits to the health and recovery of patients “It has no commercial, economic or political interest, nor does it have any expert financed by the pharmaceutical industry.”
Agência Brasil
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