Director of Institute of forensic medicine and insurance of the faculty of Medicine - University of Naples

ABSTRACT: Medical/Juridical Theme in the Practice of Homeopathy and in the Defense of Consumers' Rights in Europe of 1992.

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

In thanking all those who have organized and created this Meeting, I wish to point out that I shall now take the floor as an allopathic doctor and thus as the opposer of the homoeopathic colleaugues: this however does not mean the asumption of aprioristic positions.

Allopaths and Homoeopaths - in our country at least - all have a degree in medicine and surgery and are qualified to practice thus the verification we are making this evening with the reprentative of comsumers (the patient) and the regional authorities - who have the responsibility for the legislative issues we are now going to face - develops into a concrete cooperation or at least into a confrontation devoid of resentment, pride, conceit and arrogance.

This Round Table stems from the conclusion of a Meeting which, on 13 May, 1988, thus only 7 mounths ago, took place in Naples in the glamorous headquarters of the Italian Institute for Philosophic Studies and which attempted - through an interdisciplinary seminar - to make the point of of the situation as regards the deontologic, medico-social, medico-legal aspects of the practice of Homoeopathic Medicine.

Following are the four conclusions reached during the above seminar:

1) The need for a correct and uniform semantics; and in the

light of this need, the unpostponable need to underline the

existence of a sigle Homoeopathy. Thus, some of the

definition heard this morning ("classical Homoeopathy", non

classic Homoeopathy) have no reason to be, all that concerns

therapy in small doses or the administration of

pluriremedies, represents a deviation from Homoeopathy.

2) The need to define the Homoeopathic Remedy (and today's

meeting rises from this need). It must be remebered that

the constitutional magistrate Professor Caianiello when

closing the meeting of Naples, insisted on the need for a

correct evaluation of the results, and stated the need of

becoming acquainted with Homoeopathic Medicine through the

results that this therapeutic practice may give.

At that meeting those practices of "toxicology of the

population" such as thos of talidomide, of buronil-

metilperone, of the ban from the market of many local

anaesthetics which had in turn been authorized following the

outcome of the usual scientific-administrative routine, were

censored. This is to say, therefore, that culture is the

judgement of an encounter with an experience.

3) The compulsory correct employment of the means and not a

compulsory result; but, connected to this correct employment

of the means, the duty to inform the patient because his

consent to the homoeopathic remedy must be a free and

informed consent.

4) The fourth conclusion was dictated by mass media; on 12 May,

1988 there was a television querelle between the court of

the ill and the Fnomceo President Parodi in which it was

underlined how necessary it is to form a mental attitude in

the doctor convincing him to behave as health educator thus

forming and not only informing the patient.

The four conclusion of this Meeting held seven months ago are the grounding for the survey coordinated by Doctor Di Lascia which brought to the formulation of the Bill of Law Rutelli, Aglietta, Faccio which we are going to examine during this Meeting.

Before deepening into the working of the meeting let us solve a technical difficulty.

Professor Pocchiari should have taken the floor, but he is ill and cannot intervene: I should thus have had to report on the practice of Homoeopathic Medicine in European Countries today and compare it with the Italian situation as regards the medico-social, the deontologic and the medico-legal aspects. Then I should have gone onto pedagogic-formative problems through Professor Ventre's intervention.

Mr. Ziantoni, however, has already given the Meeting much of the time he had scheduled and thus he asked to be allowed to intervene first.

The architecture of the Roud Table will be thus upset, but "majora premunt" and the moderator can but leave the floor to Mr. Ziantoni who instead should have drawn the conclusions of the speech.