Grillo in Naples: "Doctors make you do useless tests"

Beppe Grillo in an unscheduled event at the end of the "Insomnia" show at the Diana theater with part of the audience who had stopped to take selfies with him: "In Naples in the 1950s there were no heart disease and cholesterol. Today you are the most smokers in Europe. You have no awareness. Doctors today are travel agents. They send you from one place to another but 50% of the exams are useless”.

Ottavio Lucarelli

Video R.it Naples – 12 January 2019

Dear Beppe Grillo, it is understandable that in a comedy satire what matters is the emotionally relevant joke without meditating so much on reality, assuming that reality is known.

Let's make some considerations. In the years between 50 and 60 the life expectancy it was 63.7 years for men and 67.2 years for women. Today, the life expectancy for a boy born in Italy is 78.67 years, while a girl can expect to live 84.04 years (Istat data). In 1951 the causes of death from cardiovascular pathologies were 233.1 per 100,000 inhabitants, in 1983 they were 459 to arrive at the current data, which attribute almost half of the deaths to these pathologies. The same applies to the causes of death from cancer, while the causes of death from infectious and parasitic diseases have drastically decreased. In short, it is evident that the average life span has lengthened and as the causes of death from infectious diseases have decreased, obviously, due to age, other pathologies typical of the elderly are increasing. However, if the average life has lengthened there will also be a reason. Maybe even more than one. We should try to understand what they are.

But it is not on the mythical rhetoric on the 50s that we want to dwell, but on medical travel agents, not only because they make their patients "travel", but they themselves travel. We don't want to be paranoid but we are probably also referring to trips to various congresses and meetings financed by pharmaceutical companies through their hitmen, the great corruptors: the ISF. And given the well-known hostility towards the ISF, we take this opportunity to recall and retrace the legislative events that have seen them involved and which led to the current regulation.

In the 1950s there was no patent for medicines and there was practically no regulation of scientific information. Those who did not do research systematically copied the drugs that promised the greatest profits. This is how pharmaceutical research in Italy was destroyed. There was no scientific information, there were propagandists trained in "sales". The means used today would cause scandal, far from travel!

The fear of facilitating “charlatans, apothecaries and secretaries” and that there was a “increase caused by the privatization” meant that the first Italian law on the patent of medicines, the Royal Decree n. 1127 of 1939, was restrictive; indeed the paragraph 1 of the art. 14 totally prohibited the protection of medicines. This law was in line with the orientation of the time at the European level, specifically the decree resumed the Piedmontese law n. 782 of 12 March 1855. It was the Court of Cassation with the judgment no. 20 of 9 March 1978 to mark the change of orientation in Italy, declaring the unconstitutionality of the first paragraph of the art. 14 and thus paving the way for the creation of patents in the pharmaceutical field, even if co-marketing was introduced to compensate those who did not do research.

It was with the Law 23 December 1978, n. 833 “Establishment of the National Health Service” that the concept of "regulation of the scientific information service on drugs and the activity of scientific representatives" perfected by Ministerial Decree of 23 June 1981 – Art. 1- also taken up by Ministerial Decree November 23, 1982 And Ministerial Decree February 26, 1985 in which it is said that L'scientific information activities on medicines for human use …. it must be aimed at ensuring the correct use of the drugs themselves, too with reference to the need to limit the related consumption".

Then we came to the most recent ones Legislative Decree 12-30-92 n. 540 And dLegislative decree 24 April 2006, n. 219 and subsequent amendments There are also many other laws and ministerial decrees that we omit so as not to be boring. Without counting the various sentences of the Cassation, it is enough to remember that the Supreme Court has established that the consumption of medicines is not regulated by the criterion of pleasure, but by that of utility, and that doctors are recipients of information "che aims not to abstractly advertise the product by praising its virtues or the visual pleasantness of the packaging, but to inform them of the nature and pharmaceutical uses of the product, in which cases it is indicated, in which cases it is not and in which cases it is even harmful” (see Cassation n. 25053 of 2006; see also see Cass. no. 8844 of 2014; Cass. no. 2349 of 2013; Cass. no. 5494 of 2013)”

All this to say that there are laws that clearly separate marketing and sales from scientific information on drugs. If this happens, it is a crime and must be prosecuted as such. Obviously, as in all categories, there is always someone who commits crimes, but it goes without saying that all ISFs are corruptors. We remind Beppe Grillo that one of his namesake, from the party he founded, is at the helm of the Ministry of Health. It would be advisable for strict control to be implemented so that the laws are respected. Not standards adopted on clichés without knowing the reality. Just think of the useless rules of theANAC or of the Emilia-Romagna Region which ultimately favor the corruptors and cause dismissals of ISF who can no longer work. See, for example, the recent case of the layoffs in Sanofi: in Emilia, out of 15 ISFs, 10 were fired. Just for comparison: in Puglia, only two layoffs out of 12.

We expect Minister Grillo to change the register and implement a real check on existing laws, not new laws, the ones that exist are more than sufficient.

One last brief observation on Beppe Grillo's statement on useless exams. It may be that they are useless, but a defensive medicine cannot do otherwise, especially when they are broadcast by various TV networks an insistent compensation advertising for medical errors.