European Federalist Parliamentary Group

ABSTRACT: The law we are discuting today is the result of that process, ever more necessary, of interdependence between politics and science which is probably the most important challenge of our era.

(Papers of the Transnational Conference: "THE HOMOEOPATIC REMEDY-NON-MEDICINE. A PROPOSAL FOR RECOGNITION" - Rome 12th and 13th december 1988).

Chairman, speakers, participants, I hope you will excuse my absence due to other pressing engagements.

I am really disapponted to have to relinquish a meeting which is personally important.

My participation could bring no important contribution to the meeting scientifically speaking, but a methodologic involvement and a witness and this is by no means marginal, but of the utmost importance if it is true, as I believe it is, that the problems regarding the development of the Homoeopathic medical science are above all bound to the problem of method. By this I mean that the difficulties we encounter as doctors and as consumers are above all bound to an approach towards problems of health which stems from the uniqueness of each individual and thus from the specificity of each intervention which is consequently preventive and it is the opposition of this basic methodological principle to the dynamics of a society based above all on consumistic criteria and on interests which find in these criteria the ground on which to grow and spread out.

I do not wish to generalize this subject as I know very well that there are convictions, competences, devotions, surveys and researches in the branch of official medicine which are utterly serious, and appreciable and which I deeply respect. Nor is it a problem of conflicting interests, but there certainly is a different approach in the method which is at the basis of the different configuration that these two medical schools have at all levels in our society.

What is certain is that the present situation is the result on the one hand of the logic of profits of the pharmaceutic industry as witnessed recently by the financial law and on the other hand by the employment of the medicine not as a period of interaction in the nromal life of an individual with a basically preventive function, but as an intervention on the diseased subject and thus on the disease which becomes the object of the intervention. Tjis makes medicine take on a function of power which inevitably becomes one of conflictwith the life of the diseased considered as a whole.

What I wish to underline is that it is not by chance that in an Italy in which the logics of the control of power as regards the individual have been and are historically and ideoligically connected with the development of an economic, social and political pattern of a conservative and repressive kind, bound to business and interests which are functional to this system, all that is conflicting and in this case Homoeopathic Medicine, is margined. Nowadays we could somehow define the assizes in question as one formed of more or less clandestine forefathers and not as a delayed deadline of a scientific process with an important background and with roots going deep into a knowledge empirically verified each time in the last 200 years.

It was inevitable that the culture prevailing in our system, should but be unwilling to accept a system and a process which by simplifying things has a strong charge of liberation, self-sufficiency and therefore liable to overthrow schemes and roles.

It is thus easy to understand how my personal history as a woman and a well-rooted convinction indicates that the path of pointing on the individual, on responsibility and on the differences as the indispendable basis of democratic dialectics, convinctions which are at the base of my politico-radical activity, have taken me step by step through the stage of rebellion, retaliation and a different relationship between medicine and the individual, to a concern over Homoeopathic Medicine, acknowledging its validity and as a result responsibilized by the right/duty to start with the other colleagues of my group a legislative process of acknowledgement and regulation of this sector.

For the sake of honesty I must say that my attitude towards Homoeopathic Medicine is also due to the fact of having found in the Homoeopathic Remedy and thanks to Maria Teresa Di Lascia, a solution to a momentarily critical health condition which seemed to find no other solution.

I must thus say that the law we are discussing today is the result of a series of situations and convinctions, both personal and political, which besides making me acquainted with Homoeopathic Medicine have made me a convinced supported, well intentioned to make it accessible to all citizens through this legislative initiative for which we must thank Maria Teresa Di Lascia of whose intelligent convinction, propaganda and determination this law is the result. Just as it is the result of that process ever more necessary of interdependence between politics and science whichtoday is probably the most important challenge of our era.

In conclusion, I believe that contributions which will come in this respect are the first step in a direction which should be marked by mutual willingness and mutual scientific interests such as that of officially acknowledging this medical science will all the consequences in therms of opportunity of research, study and analysis, growth, knowledge and, without wanting to seem too utopian, of a democratic growth of our Country.