Discursos sobre a interdição à auto-hemoterapia: genealogia de um fato médico-científico

Abstract

This thesis intends to present the knowledge obtained from research concerning the process that leads to the interdiction attributed to a health "technique" called autohemotherapy (AHT). Here it is intended to demonstrate the political dimension of the action (taken, jointly, by political and biomedical entities) to make health practitioners "forbidden" to practice AHT. The interdiction of the AHT is treated here as an event permeated by three dimensions of social life, namely, economic, scientific and political. The central focus is concentrated on the latter two. The thesis I present here is that the change in the scientific parameters of medicine was influenced by the discovery of penicillin. I develop this thesis from some hypotheses, namely: 1) "Medical-scientific" agents (or biomedical ones, figured in the Federal Medical Council) are carrying out a political action in suggesting the "ban" to the AHT – based on alleged lack of scientificity – since no research is used, Required by them, attesting to any risk of using the therapy; 2) The interdictive act is the result of an "institutional thought"; 3) The prohibition of AHT is based on the change in the criteria of scientificity and the reduction of "medical authority" in the production of health knowledge for pharmacological knowledge.