The following article, signed by Patrícia Villela Marino, was originally published in the newspaper O Globo on October 2nd.
President Donald Trump’s recent statement associating the use of paracetamol during pregnancy with the risk of autism not only ignores decades of serious scientific studies, but also resurrects a dangerous and familiar pattern: the use of medical disinformation by authoritarian leaders as an instrument of social domination.
This is the same script adopted by Jair Bolsonaro during the Covid-19 pandemic, when promoting chloroquine as a miraculous cure for a lethal virus, disregarding warnings from the medical and scientific community. In both cases, the truth is buried by conspiracy narratives that, instead of protecting lives, weaponize fear and sow death.
These strategies are not the result of ignorance, but of calculation. Feeding informational chaos, discrediting experts, and promoting false solutions creates a fog of confusion in which authoritarian decisions are imposed more easily. The population, numbed by the avalanche of false news and skeptical of institutions, becomes fertile ground for leaders who offer an illusion of order at the expense of individual and collective rights.
It is in this context that the decision by Minister Flávio Dino of the Supreme Federal Court to authorize the Federal Police to open an investigation against former president Jair Bolsonaro (PL), Bolsonarist parliamentarians, and other suspects of crimes during the Covid-19 pandemic gains extreme relevance. This resumption of investigations — initiated by the Covid Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry but interrupted at the end of the parliamentary commission — represents an act of institutional courage and a breath of lucidity after the collective numbness provoked by lovers of absolute power. This is not just about reviewing past mistakes, but about signaling that democratic institutions still have the strength to hold accountable those who weaponized death for political purposes.
While in the United States, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) finds itself pressured to issue alerts without scientific basis under Trump’s direct influence, in Brazil the Supreme Court offers repeated lessons in civic-social spirit. By ensuring the right to investigation and memory, our Court reaffirms that democracy does not survive without accountability and that abuse of power must be confronted firmly — whether it is disguised as patriotism, faith, or pseudoscience.
It is now up to the American Supreme Court to observe this posture. Democracy, in any latitude, depends on the courage of its institutions to resist authoritarian populism. Because when rulers choose to ignore science, they not only make mistakes, but use lies as a weapon to weaken the social fabric and concentrate power.
May truth, sustained by evidence and strong institutions, continue to be our guide. Because there is no possible freedom where manipulation reigns.
Patrícia Villela Marino, president of Humanitas360 Institute, is a member of the Council for Sustainable Economic and Social Development of the Presidency of the Republic
