BRIEF LEGAL CONSIDERATIONS ON THE CONTROVERSY INVOLVING SYNTHETIC PHOSPHETHANOLAMINE, THE “CANCER PILL” Thays Costa Nostre Teixeira, Ligia Maria Comis Dutra

Abstract

According to the World Health Organization, cancer is the second largest cause of death in the world and in the year of 2015 was responsible for 8.8 million deaths. Between this frightening number, the desperation for a cure and the search for less degrading treatments to the organism, appears the synthetic phosphoethanolamine, the "cancer pill" as it became known. In a simplified way, phosphoethanolamine is a substance produced by the human body and is present in all its tissues and organs as a signaling and regulator of cellular metabolism. In its synthetic form was irregularly distributed for more than twenty years by the chemist Gilberto Chierice and his team in the Institute of Chemistry of São Carlos, fact that end up feeding an illusion of a miracle cure. With the cessation of its distribution, interested parties began to join the judiciary to try to obtain it, and the excessive amount of lawsuits led to the sanction of the Law 13.269, which authorizes the use of synthetic phosphoethanolamine by patients diagnosed with malignant neoplasia. The objective of this study was to analyze the impact of the disclosure and release for the use of synthetic phosphoethanolamine, without previous studies, as regulated by the National Agency of Sanitary Surveillance (Anvisa), through data collection, interpretation of legislation, jurisprudence and Federal Constitution to reach this goal. Among the analyzed factors is the evidence of a great variation of weight in the capsules that are being distributed besides the concentration of the compound being below the expected one. It was then concluded that the release of synthetic phosphoethanolamine without tests to verify its efficacy is incompatible with the precepts determined by the Federal Constitution that assure the right to health and that the interference of the Judiciary in the competence of Anvisa is an aggravation of the Separation of Powers and it can result in a regression of immeasurable size.