Regarding doctors and patients (Mrs. Marisa's stroke)

"A faith that lacks solidarity is a dead faith. Whoever wishes for the death of a brother or sister has no need to attend church." (Pope Francis, February 2017)

1. THE MEANING OF THE MEDICAL PROFESSION

Primitive doctors were the tribe's shamans.

This created an aura of magic around the medical profession in its early days.

But the evolution of scientific knowledge and the growing and inevitable incorporation of technologies to diagnose, prevent, and treat illnesses has placed medicine on a level more accessible to human understanding.

Some have even claimed that technology would dehumanize the medical profession. It seems that this is not quite the case.

On the contrary, actually. Patients' access to information/communication technologies has created the figure of "Dr. Google," freely accessible to patients, which obliges doctors to maintain constant scientific updates – continuing education – and to exchange information with the people under their care and their families. It has also created a kind of sharing – or complicity – between doctors and patients and their families, who have become part of the diagnostic and therapeutic decision-making process.

In short, this has been the hallmark of what could be called modern medicine. And new and unbelievable advances are already being incorporated. At an incredible speed.

However, there are values ​​and standards that can be assumed to be immutable - and permanent - in medical practice.

Considering the immense power that doctors have over patients, there is a Code of Ethics that all professionals must obey. And a symbolic oath, known as the Hippocratic Oath, is taken at graduation ceremonies, where professionals, broadly speaking, promise to practice their profession with competence, dignity, and humility.

And all are controlled by local and national bodies, the CRMs and the CFM, public entities whose function is to "protect patients against possible misconduct by professionals." (Few people imagine the regional and federal medical councils having these functions).

But there is also an inner drive, perhaps an internal impulse, that makes people choose the medical profession: the desire to help individuals who are losing their health to regain it. To protect their health through preventive medicine. To even resort to palliative therapy when curative resources are exhausted and become useless.

As some wise individuals say, what guides those who choose medicine as a profession is liking people. Having solidarity with them. And compassion.

Therefore, when donning their white coats, doctors need to be imbued with these enduring values ​​and their noble and dignified mission, keeping their patients as the constant focus of their care and demonstrating profound human solidarity.

2. SOMETHING HAPPENS WITH THE SCULPTORS: THE MEDIA AND POLITICAL IDEOLOGY
The current political game, mediated by political parties but with decisive complicity from the media, has brought some surprises and perplexities related to the public behavior of Brazilian doctors and middle-class citizens.
Doctors of all specialties, as an integral part of the social organism, are also subjected to continuous and competent brainwashing (the term may be strong, but it is perfectly adequate) by the media. This media is part of the economic elite, which needs control of all powers to impose its ideological content through political propaganda and manipulation, without limits.

Since the end of 2002, with the rise of the Workers' Party to the presidency, Brazilians have been subjected to intense media bombardment. The objective: to create political and ideological hatred towards the PT.

The results of this political-media operation became visible starting in 2005 with the so-called Mensalão scandal. But since the electoral results in the three subsequent presidential elections were not as expected, the Brazilian elite opted to remove the Workers' Party from power at any cost. This decision resulted in a strange and turbulent impeachment process, the so-called parliamentary-legal coup.

In practice, this represents a return to power of neoliberal ideology, imposing a retrograde agenda on Brazil that is contrary to national interests, and causing Brazil to regress to the 19th century.

What we are witnessing now is the disastrous performance of the new political animals created by the media. An undeniable success of media efficiency.

Members of the middle class consumed by political and ideological hatred, skillfully inoculated by the media through ruthless brainwashing over 14 years of free and irresponsible manipulation. Without any ethical limits. Without the slightest control.

Just two current examples, related to the fatal illness of former President Lula's wife, would be enough to demonstrate where the misguided, unjustifiable behavior of these new political animals, driven by hatred and openly proclaiming: "Mrs. Marisa Letícia must die," can lead.

1. The presence of two women at the entrance of the Sírio Libanês Hospital in São Paulo, carrying signs offensive to the former first lady, Mrs. Marisa Letícia, who was hospitalized there due to a severe hemorrhagic stroke, from which she later died. The signs and statements of these protesters explicitly expressed their support for the patient's death;

2. Finally, the astonishing statement from a neurosurgeon recommending to his colleagues attending the former first lady that they simply execute the patient. In other words, to promote a medical-legal murder. After all, she was an enemy of his neoliberal convictions, therefore deserving death. Simple as that.

What could have led these people – including a medical professional – to publicly take such positions? Positions so clearly contrary to the right to life, inherent to all human beings? So distant from the humanitarian sentiments and solidarity that are integral to the most basic religious standards and beliefs? What inexorably distances us from the possibility of living in a civilized society?

The floor is now open to the owners of media companies – radio stations, newspapers, magazines, TV channels – and their so-called "journalists," who fuel hatred, lies, and the most blatant falsification of news and interpretations of reality, repeated daily.

This type of political animal, produced in their factories of political-ideological propaganda, represents the undeniable success of more than a decade of irresponsible manipulation.

Where do you imagine leading the country, with such falsehoods? Remember that the Germans, in the 1930s, also manipulated by Goebbels, Hitler's Minister of Communications, supported the persecution of Jews. And they violently insulted those who were transported on trains to their undignified deaths in concentration camps, characterizing the "final solution." The Holocaust, an indelible stain on the history of humanity.

We know the results of this extermination policy. It is remembered to this day, so that it is never repeated.

No population, or group of individuals, in any country, regardless of their level of socio-economic and cultural development, would be free from the manipulation of their collective feelings. These feelings are modified according to the interests of their elites, who are, as always, manipulated by the media.

How else can we explain the behavior of the American population in recent decades, if not through this efficient process?

Americans believe, and are surely convinced, that the United States has a mission to fulfill in the world; that their armies always participate in "just wars"; that free competition and the free market are the best way to achieve progress. And they apply Darwin's theories to the socio-economic field: only the fittest should survive.

Inequality, social injustice, economic exclusion, and the absence of rights are merely collateral damage caused by the god of the market.

The media plays an essential role in creating and maintaining this ideology. It's almost a religion.

It is easy, therefore, to blame the political animals, the product of sordid ideological propaganda. To demand their punishment.

But the real culprits are out there. Free. Unpunished. Ready to commit new crimes and offenses. The contingent of "political animals" has increased. Ready to proclaim political nonsense, "city and world".

Until when?

Rest in peace, Mrs. Marisa Letícia. And forgive those who do not know what they are doing.

In his memory, the verses of the great poet, Carlos Drummond de Andrade: "things that end, much more than beautiful, these will remain..."