European Federalist Parliamentary Group

ABSTRACT: To respond to the demand of hundreds of thousands of people who are tired of having recourse to a basically clandestine method of treatment and recognize only those remedies which, by experience, have proved to be the only effective ones.

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

Ladies and gentleman, allow me to thank on behalf of the European Federalist Group the relators of this important Meeting. Their presence by itself is enough to underline the importance of the subject we are going to deal with and the value of our Bill of Law.

I also wish to thank all of you because you have helped us to prove the interest and sensitivity Homoeopathy arises.

My brief talk, however, does not wish to be a formal greeting, but I wish to explain with utter sincerity why I signed the Bill of Law regarding the acknowledgement of Homoeopathic Remedies.

In honesty I must inform you that I do not use homoeopathic remedies because the alternative to my illness, to my treatment which is physiotheraphy, could be a kind of pranotherapy in which I do not believe.

I deem that, though I have been rather diffident as regards the so-called alternative treatments, it is of the utmost importance that this Bill of Law be signed by people who are treated homoeopathically as well as by those who continue to use allopathic drugs. In fact, on this matter we demand a lay approach, based on confrontation and on the actual facts.

In the introduction to our proposal we say that it is impossible to deny the evidence of facts proven by homoeopaths.

It is not necessary to be a specialist to understand that people treated homoeopathically increase day by day and to realize that many of these recover: it is not even necessary to be politicians to understand that an enormous number of chemists sell hundreds of products on which the state makes no comment whatever and that this has created market brackets which escape all control. I wonder, for example, how is the consumer who buys a homoeopathic toothpaste safeguarded.

The issues we have wanted to face with our proposal are substantially two: respond to the demand of hundreds of thousands of people who are tired of turning to a basically clandestine method of treatment and acknowledge only those remedies which according to experience are the only ones for which the curative results may be proven.

The acknowledgement of Homoeopathy must be seen nowadays as an acknowledgement of freedom; actually it is intolerable that the administrators of health in our country still pretend not to know that there is a great number of people who chose and ask for treatment which is different from that of official medicine.

I believe that the National Health Service must respond to these legitimate requirements. Everyone has the right to the treatment he retains most efficacious and within the limits of legality the State must face these demands.

Homoeopathic Medicine represents the most macroscopic aspect of this situation and it is certainly also the subject on which strangely enough there is less to discuss about. If we exclude agopuncture, Homoeopathy in fact is the only one among alternative medicines which undergoes a continuous specialistic research, treats millions of patients, raises issues which thrust into deep crises traditional scientific knowledge. I believe that the State cannot be blind in the face of this reality and I believe that delay in this field is due mainly to the excessive vicinity of politics, financing and research.

The acknowledgement of Homoeopathic Medicine is nowadays of the utmost importance and here comes the second of the issues mentioned above, that is the safeguard of consumers. This is the reason why we ask that doctors should practice it and that chemists should sell the Homoeopathic Remedy.

It must also be mentioned that it is not possible to write "Homoeopathic Product" on any thing only because it is a homoeopathic product, but only on that product which responds to certain requisites. There has been much arguing on this last aspect and I would thus like to be extremely clear. Nowadays the homoeopathis market is enlòarging to the point that there is a commercial interest to multiply the products. We have decided not to acknowledge as homoeopathic products the compound products. Actually we believe that the points raised by doctors and researchers consulted during the preparation of the Bill of Law were more than convincing. These points have been cleared in the introduction to the Bill of Law and thus it is useless to repeat them; it must be said, however, that this initiative is only the first step, a first approach to the problem.

By further initiatives we shall face another two problems: the one regarding the acknowledgement of homoeopathic doctors and the one regarding the prescription of Homoeopathic Remedies paid for by the National Health Service just as for any other product. The first approach, however, could only be that of the acknowledgement of Homoeopathy which we understand not only as alternative medicine, but also as an acknowledgement of freedom.