Credit, Agência Brasil
Another chapter is being written about the death of the then elected president of Brazil Tancredo Neves (1910-1985), which occurred on April 21, 1985 — the first civilian who would command the country, if he had taken office, after the military dictatorship.
After 12 years without any proceedings, the Federal Regional Court of the 1st Region (TRF1) recognized the family's right to have access to documents and procedures related to the medical treatments that preceded his death.
This is the result of a habeas data request regarding the then president's medical records. The decision was handed down on October 26th.
In other words, the Court responded to the family members' request and broke the medical confidentiality of the medical records relating to the politician's care, procedures and surgeries since March 14 of that year.
On that date, the eve of the presidential inauguration ceremony, Tancredo felt unwell and was treated at the Hospital de Base in Brasília with . Tancredo Neves was hospitalized on the eve of the presidential inauguration with inflammation in the large intestine region – and initially received treatment for acute appendicitis and, later, for diverticulitis. He died of septicemia a month later, on April 21, 1985.
The records now released go up to the politician's death, more than a month later, at the Hospital das Clínicas in São Paulo.
More importantly: the understandings of the Federal Council of Medicine, as well as the Brasília unit of the Regional Council of Medicine, regarding the case may become known.
According to the lawyer representing Neves' family, Juliana Porcaro, the interest is in knowing what arguments the professional institution used to warn the doctors involved in the procedures carried out in the last days of the then president-elect.
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According to the lawyer, the court decision is not just a “legal victory”.
"It's a victory for memory, the right to information and the search for historical truth", she declares.
Porcaro states that the decision does not mean the closure of a story, but rather the achievement of "the possibility of knowing the pages that are still missing".
When personal health stops being a private matter
The legal case against the medical entities was filed in February 2012.
It was being processed until 2014, without a judgment on the merits. The action, from 2012, has the politician's son, lawyer Tancredo Augusto Tolentino Neves as the author and asks the medical councils to present all the "medical records, processes, procedures and other documents" relating to the care to which the then president-elect Tancredo Neves underwent in the days before his death.
The objective, says the petition, would be to clarify the circumstances of the clinical condition, hospitalization and cause of death of the illustrious patient.
The legal thesis that supports the request is that even medical secrecy should not be an absolute value and must "give way to the specific interests of the petitioner and his family, as well as the history of the country itself" — which, according to the petition, "calls for convincing explanations about the unexpected and rapid death of the first president of the Republic elected after the dictatorship".
The text also highlights that, in the case of a President of the Republic, personal health is no longer a private issue, as it has repercussions on the "functioning of institutions" and the "interests of society".
After remaining idle from 2014 until the beginning of last year, the office of a TRF judge consulted the parties about whether or not they were interested in resuming the case.
In response to the Court, lawyer Porcaro stated that she wished to continue. "Denying access to medical documents of a deceased former president […] is preventing the recovery of facts that belong to national history", argued the lawyer. Also officially, the medical council said it was not opposed to the trial taking place.
In conversation with the reporter, Porcaro stated that, although it is now known that Neves' death was caused by a succession of medical errors, there is still interest in knowing "what is involved in this process" — in this case, the internal process of the Federal Council of Medicine.
"There is something to which the medical error is attributed", he suspects. "We want to know what the council considered wrong in the doctors' conduct."
According to the lawyer, "after so many years", only "the historical interest" remains — since, she says, "there is no more time to punish" those involved.
The justification is that the interest persists because the episode would go beyond family interest, involving the preservation of institutional memory and the clarification of a fragment of the country's recent history.
The Federal Council of Medicine was contacted for the report, but did not respond to questions. In a statement released to the press this week, the agency announced that it had not yet been officially notified by the Court.
President of the Health, Bioethics and Biolaw Commission of the Federal District section of the Brazilian Bar Association, lawyer Thais Maia believes that the case will bring interesting discussions to the area, with arguments that can later support future cases.
According to her, access to medical records is an issue that "revolves around the balance between the patient's right to privacy and the relevance of the public and historical interest involving health", in this case, of a president who "was very symbolic of the re-democratization process" of the country.
She also remembers that there are three frameworks to be debated in the context of such a trial.
Firstly, the constitutional right to privacy. In addition, medical confidentiality — which protects all patients. Finally, the recent General Personal Data Protection Law (LGPD), of 2018, which qualifies information of this type as "sensitive".
“But there is an understanding that there are no absolute rights,” says Maia. "Here comes the public and historical interest in relation to the political dimension of a patient like this."
'I'm no longer interested'
Tancredo Neves' son, played by Porcaro, does not show the same disposition. In a conversation with BBC News Brasil in July, now retired lawyer Tancredo Augusto Tolentino Neves argues that he is no longer interested in accessing the material.
“We don’t need it anymore,” he said. "I'm no longer interested. This matter is closed."
According to Tolentino Neves, the conspiracy theories that hovered around his father's death — from poisoning to a gunshot — fell to the ground with the publication of the book O Paciente - O Caso Tancredo Neves, written by doctor and researcher Luís Mir and published in 2010 by Editora de Cultura.
To write the work, Mir had access to more than 900 documents, including medical records, in order to reconstruct those final days of Tancredo Neves. His conclusion was that death occurred due to a succession of medical errors, culminating in septicemia — and death from generalized infection.
"He did a survey. And he's a doctor, as well as being a writer. His book is a fantastic libel", commented Tolentino Neves. "At the time there was a lot of nonsense, that he had been poisoned, that he had been shot, that it was this, that it was that..."
"Luís Mir wrote a technical book. What interested me [in this case] he did: because my father's death certificate says he was [killed by] septicemia. But the septicemia was due to the mistakes they made in the seven operations. All the doctors."
Credit, Federal Senate
The legal process opened in 2012 was motivated both by the repercussion of Mir's work and by his interest. Tolentino Neves had given the doctor and writer a power of attorney so that he could request medical documents on behalf of the family — and thus be able to research the book.
This is how Mir would have obtained the medical records. The negative, however, came when he sought to know the understanding of the Council of Medicine.
The legal document in progress even mentions that access to such information would be important for a new edition of Mir's book.
Tancredo Neves' son clarified that, in fact, he never took the lead in this legal battle for full access to his father's medical records. If his name appears in the records, he explained, it is because of the power of attorney he gave to Mir.
In a conversation with the reporter also in July, Mir confirmed his interest — but revealed that he was unaware of the information that the process had been resumed. Tancredo Neves' son was also not completely informed about the progress of the process. "I found out [about the reopening of the case] via WhatsApp. Friends sent it to me," said Tolentino Neves.
Tolentino Neves said he believed that, if his father had not become president, he would have survived — the mistakes would be a consequence of the desire to make him ready for office quickly. "They made the wrong incisions, gave anesthesia through a thicker tube, in short, it was a series of mistakes", he highlights.
The report sought to contact other family members of Tancredo Neves, but they either did not respond or directed Tolentino Neves — this was also the conduct of Tancredo's grandson, the current federal deputy Aécio Neves (PSDB-MG), through his press secretary.
Credit, Presidency of Brazil
The death of the president
Elected in January 1985, indirectly, by the electoral college, Tancredo Neves, was the name of the opposition to the military regime who would be the first civilian president after the 1964 coup. He fell ill on March 14, after a religious event in Brasília, the day before the inauguration date. With intense abdominal pain, he was admitted to the Hospital de Base in the Federal District.
It was a blow. Tancredo's inauguration, after all, was the long-awaited symbolic end to the dictatorship period.
Reports at the time indicate that Tancredo Neves himself had been postponing the search for medical care, as the symptoms had been frequent but he wanted to be sworn in before undergoing treatment. He had a tumor in his intestine and, according to Mir points out in his book, the doctors who received him in March of that year confused the condition, initially treating it as acute appendicitis.
On March 15, even to calm the country's political tempers, vice-president José Sarney received the presidential sash and was sworn into office.
In those weeks, Tancredo Neves' agony was covered in the media. On the 25th, for example, aiming for supposed normality, a photo was released of Tancredo Neves sitting on the hospital sofa, with clear difficulty. In the scene, he appears surrounded by doctors, sporting smiles, as if the atmosphere were peaceful.
Tancredo Neves would undergo seven surgeries and die on April 21st. He was never sworn in.
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