Vaccines, a bad Italian story
by Vincenzo Maddaloni
Let’s stop with this Roberto Burioni that throws families into a panic evoking pestilences, with the mainstream that always dedicates great space. Take care, for some time now Burioni has been dusted, whenever the government is suffering from yellowing. It works.
In fact, it is recent history the media fuss around the pro-vax turnaround of Grillo that signs the “Pact for science” to support the use of vaccines: an adhesion that is considered a turning point for the M5S, which in the past was on dubious positions above all on the usefulness of vaccines. Just enough to unleash the usual instrumental and one-way media campaign, which does not include any form of listening or contradictory. On the contrary, every time he gets up because “the irreducible ones do not come to terms even if there is an obligation. The important thing, however, is to reiterate the usefulness of vaccines “, as the immunologist Guido Silvestri, the promoter of the so-called” Pact for science “, is shouting.
The dispute created with the mainstream aid does not exist, simply because there are no disputes between “No Vax-Yes Vax”, as they are painted.
The scenario is in substance very different. On the one hand there are supporters of the obligation to impose on parents; on the other side there are those parents, who are not against vaccines, but are against the “mandatory principle”. Unfortunately, to be against this principle is equivalent — in Italy — to be against vaccines, as saying that the free choice in medicine can not be admitted. Yet it is difficult to think that in a civilized and democratic country, the mandatory nature of the vaccine can have purposes that are consistent with the mandatory provisions of the Italian Constitution, on health.
For the record, there is a survey that dates back to 1985, promoted by the Royal Society conducted by a group of experts in Science and Technology Studies, led by the German oncologist Walter Fred
Bodmer, published in the Public Understanding of Science (PUS) in which he insisted above all on the fact that “scientists must learn to communicate with the public, to want to do it and in fact to consider their duty to do so”.
The initiatives that arise from this relationship revolve, the Bodmer team argues, all around a common problem: how can the individual citizen, the “profane”, consciously and knowingly intervene on issues of undeniable complexity that affect the quality of the daily life, with enticing promises, but as many unknown risks? Of course in Italy where the conclusions of the Bdmer team do not make a text, there is the “rescue” of long-lasting associations such as Corvelva, (Veneto Regional Coordination for the Freedom of Vaccinations), which was founded in 1993 as its principle free choice of vaccinations, “regarding the scholastic aspect, of the Juvenile Court and sanctions obtaining excellent results”, as it declares. But since the Lorenzin decree on vaccinations is in force, it is forced to confront the dogmatic arrogance of the Burrioni or, even worse, with the instrumental and one-way media campaigns to support the vaccines.
The threat of epidemics if the vaccine is renounced is so deafening, pressing, and intimidating that it is impractical to distinguish the interest of science from the interest of politics. As evidence, there is the turnaround of Grillo today in favor of mass vaccinations, with the applause of Matteo Renzi who was the first to insist on the compulsory vaccines, and then used the subject science as a weapon of electoral struggle. It matters little if the result has been devout for his party, so the Genoese comedian has imitated him. Do you both care about Italians health? It seems strange.
Certainly it is rather bizarre that, there is not a talk show host who organizes a debate on why politics has pressed and presses with such passion and zeal on the compulsory vaccination, supporting it with an impressive media campaign, to say the least suspicious, and with investments of public money billionaires, in a period of indiscriminate cuts to public health. With such a framework it becomes difficult to imagine an investigation, on the “who benefits” the experimentation of pharmaceutical multinationals through
Ten vaccines on childre, a single case in Europe, made possible by the Lorenzin law that obliges parents to adhere to the experimentation. That is total submission.
The fact is that every time we raise the theme of the “obligatory” we find ourselves constantly faced with information interwoven with double truths, one for the insiders, the other sweetened for the plebs.
This happens in a country where a report by the Observa Science in Society Research Center revealed that in Italy the most critical issue concerns not so much the trust in science tout court, rather “on the organization of scientific activity and the practical modalities with which they are priorities defined and resources managed “, as one Italian in two believes that” even the research world is governed significantly by market logic and economic interests “. Observa’s report also stated that Italian “is distrusting not so much for the results of technical and scientific innovation, but for the ways in which these changes are made and in relation to the behavior of the institutions responsible for innovation, risk management and public involvement. “
Certainly a constant was born from the date of the relationship that dates back to 2009 to today. It concerns a certain way of gorvernare that has defined the social status, deconstructing even the school system that is the cornerstone of every nation that wants to progress. Some data?
Health care tickets grew 40.6 percent between 2009 and 2015. 76.7 percent for drugs, while pay visit costs in public hospitals rose by 21.9 percent one hundred. Nevertheless, the quality and quantity of public health has worsened, while in terms of spending there are still pockets of inefficiency that could be worth up to 3.2 billion. But the worst is that the number of Italians who can not cure themselves also grows. According to the findings of the Ermeneia study center, in 2016, 16.2 percent of families “postponed one or more services (a phenomenon that involved between 4 and 8 million eople)”. Finally, 10.9 percent of families (2.7–5.4 million people) have instead given up treatment. But the vaccines are making news, so the plebeian thinks of something else.
