Independent Left Wing

ABSTRACT: If we think of what will happen in 1992 with a new European Legislation, time is rather short if we wish Italian homoeopaths to obtain a statute and dignity in our country.

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

Franca Bassi has just talked of some very small successes obtained in the last year and she has said that these were reached both at the Social Affairs Committee and in Parliament, with the passion and convinctions of those who have studied and thought of Homoeopathy and who, in certain cases such as mine for example, have been Homoeopathic patients. From this relationship with the homoeopathic doctor and the homoeopathic culture we have become richer both in health and in our vision fo man and the relation between patient and doctor. This of course has greatly influenced our attempts to bring the subject to Parliament.

The President of the Committee, Bogi, asked me for a report on the state of the Italian Legislation and on the present debate. Of course, it is not a scientific report, but a report related to the legislative work on the basis of which President Bogi will put on the agenda the bills of law already under way: those relating to the regulation of the manufacture, the distribution, the sale of drugs and others which may be brought up.

If we think of what will happen in 1992 with a new European Legislation, time is rather short if we wish Italian homoeopaths to obtain a statute in our country and as regards all citizens and not only as regards a scientific community or the few people concerned.

I believe that certain cultural data should be recalled, especially for legislators. I believe it is very important to bear in mind that the behaviour of Italians is changing in big masses and no longer in small cultural élites as regards their personal vision of their body and health.

This clearly ensues form the Censis report, the report on the Italians' private expenditure for health, which says that four million Italians turn towards those treatments which I prefer to call not conventional rather than alternative for an amount of about 300 billion lire per year. These data of course need to be verified. 80% of Italian citizens, though they do not turn to non conventional medicine, have no cultural or ideological prejudice as regards non conventional medicine and really wishes to get to know it, experiment it and discuss it.

We are thus facing a transformation of the citizen's culture which is a transformation of an age bound to certain cultural variables which have established themselves in the relationship between patient and doctor, such as for example the uneasiness and the sense of estrangement which we commonly have with the allopathic doctors.

This relationship is too cold, too short, bound to the diseased organ, to the seat of pain and not to the person and this is thus the first problem to be faced, a cultural desire of transformation of the relationship between doctor and patient. I believe in integrated medicine and thus deem that Homoeopaths could give a lesson to medicine also to transform the custom and way of being of the allopathic doctor.

The second problem is that regarding iatrogenicity.

The third problem is the environmental one of which my colleague Bassi has already spoken: as industrialism and the way our cities are organized modify the relationship between man and his environment, the body and its pathologies also change and it is no mistery even for non specialists that the increase in child allergies is truly alarming and worrying.

It is absolutely necessary to do one's best to give dignity and weight to Homoeopathic Medicine even if according to me it is important to work in favour of an integrated medicine.

I am attracted by the words of a man like Benveniste which makes an attempt to explain the Homoeopathic message by trying to read its effects on the cells at the level of infinitesimal relations between parts of matter because this will help Homoeopaths to progress in the research and will help patients to understand the actual effect of Homoeopathic Medicine so as to clear all doubts on easy suggestibility, of psychological dependence from the doctor, of incapacity of establishing a relation with the homoeopath on equal basis; all arguments which the allopath employed to discredit Homoeopathic Medicine.

Thus any research giving an objective significance to the Homoeopathic method must be respected, appreciated and valued, including experimentation. In fact, the experimental administration of a small dose of Baryta Carbonica to mice cannot be compared to vivisection.

But going back to my competence as member of Parliament, I believe that the problem of the Legislator is not that of being involved in conflicts among schools. We must simply bear in mind that nowadays there is a medicine which is Homoeopathy and a medical tecnique which is agopuncture supported by a vast selection of clinical literature.

There is moreover a myriad of other approaches which we respect but which must be seen in another dimension, because thay do not have the same clinical statute which we as Legislators should demand.

Lastly, as regards the future legislative work, I agree with Mainardi according to whom the first step to be taken is the one regardind the drugs but, in respect of the specificity of the Homoeopathic path, we must also think of guaranteeing an adequate specialization and we must establish some kind of relationship between Homoeopathic Medicine and the National Health Service without reaching a too mechanic homologation between these two poles which establish a new relationship never previously experimented by the allopathic medicine and which will thus have to be regulated differently.