Brazil: Nature Magazine Endorses Corrupt Socialist Lula Against ‘Threat to Science’ Bolsonaro

Brazil's former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who is running for office again, left
AP Photo/Marcelo Chello
Frances Martel

The scientific magazine Nature meddled in the Brazilian presidential election on Tuesday with an endorsement of corrupt far-left frontrunner Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, admitting the former convict was not “close to anything like perfect,” but declaring conservative rival President Jair Bolsonaro “disastrous” for the planet.

Lula, as he is popularly known, ruled the country from 2003 to 2011, a time during which the Amazon Rainforest experienced a surge in fires and a corruption scheme now known by the name of the police mission that took it down, “Operation Car Wash,” funneled taxpayers’ money illicitly into the pockets of dozens of politicians of nearly every political party in the country. Nature acknowledged that Lula himself was convicted of taking Operation Car Wash bribes and sentenced to 25 years in prison for the crime, though leftist-appointed justices in the Supreme Federal Tribunal (STF), overturned the conviction to allow him to run for president last year.

Nature did not take issue with the rampant Amazon Rainforest fires during Lula’s tenure, but condemned Bolsonaro for the same. The magazine actually praised Lula for allegedly “ramping up environmental law enforcement and curbing deforestation in the Amazon by around 80% between 2004 and 2012.”

The magazine also took issue with Bolsonaro’s opposition to Chinese coronavirus economic lockdowns – lockdowns which the World Health Organization (W.H.O.) now also rejects – and his policy of trimming federal spending on universities.

“A populist and a former army captain, Bolsonaro charged into office denying science, threatening Indigenous peoples’ rights, promoting guns as a solution to security concerns and pushing a development-at-all-costs approach to the economy,” Nature declared in its editorial on Tuesday. “Bolsonaro has been true to his word. His term in office has been disastrous for science, the environment, the people of Brazil — and the world.”

“Bolsonaro’s record is eye-popping. Under his leadership, the environment has been ravaged as he rolled back legal protections and disparaged Indigenous peoples’ rights,” the magazine continued — without elaborating — and moved on to compare Bolsonaro to “U.S. counterpart Donald Trump.”

“Like his populist former US counterpart Donald Trump, Bolsonaro ignored scientists’ warnings about [Chinese coronavirus] and denied the dangers of the disease,” the editorial continued, again without providing quotes or other evidence to back up the claim. Nature also accused Bolsonaro of creating an “economic crisis” in Brazil through his pandemic response, failing to clarify that Brazil functions under a federal system, meaning Bolsonaro’s opposition to lockdowns did not stop local governors from imposing civil rights restrictions – or residents from protesting them. Bolsonaro himself has faced fines for refusing to wear a mask, defying local orders.

“Bolsonaro also undermined vaccine programmes, questioning the safety and effectiveness of the jabs,” Nature continued.

Bolsonaro chose not to receive any coronavirus vaccine because, he said, he had already endured an infection. He also specifically questioned the effectiveness of coronavirus vaccine candidates made in China, citing Beijing’s refusal to share sufficient data on the products, not the effectiveness of vaccines generally.

Brazil’s health regulatory authority, known as Anvisa, supported Bolsonaro.

“This vaccine has already received emergency use authorization in China since June of this year,” Anvisa warned in December 2020. “The Chinese criteria to issue authorization for emergency use in China are not transparent and there is no information available over the criteria currently used by Chinese agencies to make this decision.”

Bolsonaro ultimately did not intervene to stop the vaccine candidates from being used in Brazil and thanked China for selling the products.

Gao Fu, the former head of China’s Center for Disease Control (CDC), admitted a year later that Chinese-made coronavirus vaccine products “don’t have very high protection rates.” He stepped down from the position this year.

Absent this context, Nature praised Lula for promising “to achieve ‘net zero’ deforestation and protect Indigenous lands if elected” – something he did not make any progress on as president for much of the first decade of this century.

“But Lula is not without baggage,” the science magazine lamented, acknowledging Lula’s corruption conviction but concluding, “No political leader comes close to anything like perfect.”

“But Brazil’s past four years are a reminder of what happens when those we elect actively dismantle the institutions intended to reduce poverty, protect public health, boost science and knowledge, safeguard the environment and uphold justice and the integrity of evidence,” the editorial concluded. “Brazil’s voters have a valuable opportunity to start to rebuild what Bolsonaro has torn down. If Bolsonaro gets four more years, the damage could be irreparable.”

Nature similarly condemned Bolsonaro and urged Brazilians to vote for then-rival Fernando Haddad in 2018. The magazine falsely claimed then that Bolsonaro would eliminate the Ministry of Science in the country as president, an allegation it later corrected.

Nature is one of the world’s most prestigious scientific journals, publishing since 1869. Its magazine wing has more recently loudly embraced leftist causes in the United States and around the world. In 2020, for example, the magazine participated in a leftist “anti-racism” effort called “#ShutdownStem,” in which, instead of working, its staff spent the day “educating [them]selves and defining actions we can take to help eradicate anti-Black racism.”

This year, Nature revealed that it would begin demanding of scientific article authors “details on how sex and gender were considered in study design,” apparently regardless of the relevance of sex and gender to the topic.

Brazilians will head to the polls on October 30 to choose their next president. Lula won the first round of voting on October 2 with 48 percent of the vote to 43 percent for Bolsonaro, and single-digit results for all other candidates. Presidential contenders need to receive over 50 percent of the vote to be elected president in one round of voting in Brazil, so the results prompted Sunday’s runoff election.

Polls show the distance between Lula and Bolsonaro in the single digits, often within polls’ margins of error, and Lula consistently leading. The most recent poll by the firms Genial/Quaest, published on Wednesday, found Lula receiving 48 percent of the vote compared to 42 percent for Bolsonaro.

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