Councillor responsible for Health in the Region of Lazio.

ABSTRACT: Only an efficient and coherent prevention policy can solve the most serious health problems and one should have the daring to evaluate and experiment those alternative methodologies which have until now been confined to the margins of medicine.

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

I wish to thank Professor Sciaudone for having given me the chance of intervening in this interesting meeting.

Regione Lazio sponsored this transnational meeting and I participate in it not only for the friendship and consideration which binds me to my colleague Mastrantoni, who has had so many attentions for me, but also for the interest of the subject and the outlook which may arise from this encounter.

There is no doubt that while scientific progress has brought medicine many steps forward as regards acknowledgement and diagnosis of the disease, progress as regards efficacious treatment is much slower and much more difficult.

Nowadays we are able to formulate very accurate diagnosis by employing costly and sophisticated technologies, we are able to describe point by point the development of tumours and we have an analytical knowledge of the important aspects of their pathogenesis, but we do not have an efficacious treatment.

If we exclude the field of child tumours, in the last twenty years very little progress has been made as regards the increase in the survival rate.

The effect of the great diagnostic capacity produces apparent increases in the survival ratr examined, almost entirely due to an early diagnosis rather than to an actual shift forward of the length of life.

Strangely enough, scientific progress as regards diagnosis, more often than not increase the length of experience of a disease, rather than lengthen the actual length of life.

The apparently reasonable and intuitive approach of early diagnosis has given important results only in certain cases such as that of tumours. We know, for example, that early diagnosis due to screening programmes through pap-test and mammography in tumours of the uterine cervice and of the breast, allows for an actual increase in survival. However, in a very important field, such as that of lung cancer which kills 26 thousand people per year in Italy, experiments prove that early diagnosis does not postpone death.

Clinical medicine is always more descriptive and never fully develops its main curative functions.

It is true however that we could avail ourselves of important and certainly efficacious interventions of prevention; the elimination of cigarette smoking would reduce by 70% it is believed, the incidence of lung cancer and by more than 30% all other tumours. However, such interventions of prevention are extremely difficult because they imply the resposbilitily of systems extremely different from the present health system.

Health education campaigns can certainly not defeat smoking. The elimination of cigarette smoking means intervening on the economic and productive structure of society. The same holds for pollution from city traffic, or for the indiscriminate use of pesticides in agriculture. Eventual efficacious interventions are closely linked with the structural, social and economic aspects of our society.

Moreover, it is necessary to intervene soon well knowing that the results of today's interventions will only be seen in a distant future. Suppose that if all possible intervention were at hand today to prevent the new H.I.V. infections, the virus which causes A.I.D.S., the results would be visible in terms of a decrease in A.I.D.S. cases no sooner than 6 or 7 years.

Prevention does not pay in terms of immediate success. Only an efficient and coherent prevention policy can solve the biggest problems as regards health.

We must also bear in mind another basic aspect. The classical scheme of the medical science has been upset by the development of scientific knowledge. Nowadays we cannot talk of the causes of the disease, but more appropriately of determining factors. Each disease is associated with a different strenght of probability with factors which, alone or interacting together, may cause the disease, and it is not always a matter of biological factors as history teaches us as regards T.B. when the Kock bacillus was discovered. The death rate from T.B. had lowered by half at the beginning of 1800 when streptomycin was discovered. The successes in the treatment of the disease were all attributed to this medicine and the death rate was reduced to a tenth as regards the early 1800.

It was later discovered that the main determining factor of T.B. is malnutrition and bad housing conditions. The Kock bacillus is the determining factor necessary for the disease, but it is not enough to have this infection to get ill and die from T.B.. Nowadays this disease still causes many deaths in developing countries where hunger is the main cause of death.

We know that we cannot get ill from A.I.D.S. without the H.I.V. virus infection, but we do not know what happens from the momento the infection is contracted to the clear expression of the disease.

Why do not all those infected by H.I.V. die of A.I.D.S.?

What are the other biological, psychological and social determining factors of the disease?

In medicine, as in all fields of knowledge, we have to face the challenge of complexity. The instruments of science often seem inadequate to face all the problems of man and society.

There are, however, different methodologies of knowledge. The heart of this meeting is the interaction of the systems of man of nature, proposed as alternative paths to face the problems of man.

In the history and tradition of great civilizations there are methods and instruments which our western scientific medicine seems to want to ignore or misknow.

I believe that also has regards health systems one should have the daring to evaluate and experiment alternative methodologies which have so far been confined to the margins of medicine.

My adhesion to this line of thought rises from what I have said above. We must not forget that even in recent years some of the most employed drugs have proved devoid of any scientifically proven efficacy, yet with an abudance of scientific demonstrations, well known doctors have prescribed them at large and claimed their virtues.

I thus believe that as regards Homoeopathy we should act with open mind and emply serious methods.

As responsible for health we must accept the fascinating challenge of a different knowledge with the awareness that only a great cultural honesty will help us solve the difficult and not always plain problems of the defence of man's health.

Of course, one of the main problems is the regulation of this subject. Several bills of law have been submitted and obiously the worst solution would be not to proceed to some kind of regulation and leave the subject open to all abuse.

I believe that Lazio Regional Council should engage in removing inertia and apathy and promote experimentation initiatives in the public regional structures.

I must say that we have an example of this in the Fatebenefratelli Hospital in Rome. It is necessary to insist and verify the possibility of enlarging the experience to respond both to an increasing demand and to a duty, the duty of attempting every means and manner, scientifically possible, to guarantee the defence of man's health which is the most important duty we have to perform.