Paper short abstract:

This paper presents a reflection on the process of exclusion and border crossing phenomena between the medical science and the informal sector through a case-study on the disqualification of a particular treatment against rheumatic immune-diseases in contemporary Brazil

Paper long abstract:

This paper reflects on exclusion and border crossing phenomena between the boundaries of science in the context of medical field and the informal sector in contemporary Brazil. To do this, I report and analyse a case-study of a particular treatment against rheumatic immune-diseases. The treatment was developed by medical doctors using standard scientific methods of testing in 1980s and was since then successfully applied in several cases. The treatment, however, has not been recognised and included within the established field of rheumatology and it is ignored within the context of public health. This exclusion caused that the treatment, faded in invisibility, is carried out by both medical professionals and patients illegally, carrying serious risks.

One of the central explanations for this exclusion is that the treatment is based on the opposite principle on which conventional treatments are based: instead to control symptoms through an artificial impairment of the immune-system using immunosuppressive agents, the treatment aims to strengthen the immune-system through stimulation using a specific vaccine. So in effect, the immune-system "relearns" to distinguish between own and strange cells and, therefore, stops attacking its own body (the so called "immune-reaction"). In order to understand this process of exclusion, firstly, I am going to reconstitute the trajectory of this treatment. Secondly, supported by a bibliographical research on related topics and ethnographic experience I will then discuss significant aspects of this trajectory in the light of the actor-network theory as well as of anthropological approaches on causality, taboo and fear.