Lula and Nísia want to criminalize doctors who question the effectiveness of vaccines

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) and Minister Nísia Trindade, of Health, defended this Tuesday (12) that doctors who question the effectiveness of vaccines be criminalized and prosecuted. Dissatisfaction with the performance of these professionals was expressed by both during the weekly live “Conversa com o Presidente”, which was resumed after Lula said, last week, that the program could have been the last this year in this format.

Lula did a kind of interview with the minister so that she could take stock of the management at the head of the department this year, and focused on questions about the “reconstruction” of public policies that were supposedly “destroyed” by the government of former president Jair Bolsonaro (PL). Lula even stated that Bolsonaro appointed a person to the ministry who “didn’t understand anything” about health, but without mentioning names.

One of the main questions that took up almost half of the live was about the vaccination policy, which Nísia said she found dismantled at the ministry. “We didn’t have a national immunization program, which we had to reassemble,” he said, highlighting that he had to rebuild vaccine stocks with resources from the PEC, which was approved at the end of last year, as the ministry was handed over with an “unfeasible budget”.

From this, Nísia explained the difficulty she is having in reactivating the historic vaccination policy due to “new phenomena, anti-vaccine movements” that use a “deliberate strategy of using false scientific information”.

“What we saw, and this is something to sadden, are the lives of the Supervisory Commission [da Câmara dos Deputados] in which doctors say that the vaccine can cause deaths, serious myocarditis in the case of the Covid vaccine, all fake news with no scientific basis, but appearing as if it were scientific information. This confuses the population”, said the minister (see full excerpt).

Lula questioned the minister about what could be done with people who question the effectiveness of vaccines, arguing that “it is necessary to criminalize people who are telling lies”. He called people who “decided to spread false propaganda” “thieves” and who later change their opinion when they lose a loved one to a disease that could be prevented with immunization.

Nísia stated that the ministry created a program for various public administration bodies – such as the Presidency’s Communication Secretariat (Secom), the Federal Attorney General’s Office (AGU) and the Federal Comptroller General’s Office (CGU) – to investigate these cases, and stated count on the support of the Federal Council of Medicine to also take action, as “these are ways of acting that completely violate medical ethics” and “generate panic among the population”.

In addition to defending the criminalization of doctors who question the effectiveness of vaccines, Lula and Nísia attacked the former president’s health management, stating that the government was “missing” with more areas under the ministry’s management.

Among them, the disruption of mental health care, Basic Health Units (UBS), lack of updating of medicines from the Farmácia Popular program, and the ministry’s cooperative relationship with states and municipalities were cited. Then, throughout the live, Lula and Nísia commented on actions that were and are being implemented throughout the year.

Finally, Lula highlighted that his term as president will end at the end of 2026, whereas, in previous lives, he signaled that he intended to stay in government until 2030 – therefore seeking re-election.