Reflections on respecting patient autonomy in the context of Covid-19 and beyond (Reflexões sobre o respeito à autonomia dos pacientes no contexto da Covid-19 e além), 2020.

In April 2020, Brazil’s Federal Council of Medicine (CFM, Conselho Federal de Medicina) issued opinion 4/2020, authored by president Mauro Luiz de Britto Ribeiro, regarding the treatment of Covid-19 patients using hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine. The council’s opinion, careful enough not to recommend the use of the drug, but simply to propose its consideration, was also careful when highlighting that this opinion was based on current available data and could be modified at any moment. The goal of this paper is not to discuss the pertinence of the use of these drugs in the treatment of Covid-19 patients, since there is evidence of their ineffectiveness in other scientific studies. The aim of this paper is to discuss how the patient’s autonomy is interpreted in this context.