Clean hands, please
The Italian government needs to maintain a careful
distance from industry.
Fifteen years ago, at the height of Italy’s ‘Clean Hands’ anticorruption
campaign, police broke into the house of Duilio
Poggiolini, head of the national committee for drug registration,
and discovered gold bullion under his floorboards. For many Italians,
the image of that gleaming bullion still resonates — an enduring
symbol of a time when government officials, up to and including
the health minister, routinely took bribes from the pharmaceutical
industry to approve drugs and fix their prices.
Steps were taken to avoid such a situation arising again. So it
is worrying that eir use. Martini successfully
carried out a mandate to limit spiralling drNello Martini, a pharmacist with no political
associations, has been removed by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s
new government as head of AIFA, the autonomous agency created
in 2004 to register drugs and supervise thug expenditure to 13%
of the total health budget. But in the process he incurred the wrath
of industry. Only a few weeks ago, government prosecutors in
Turin charged Martini with disastro colposo, or ‘causing unintentional
disaster’, for bureaucratic delays in updating the packaging
information on the side effects of a few drugs — although none
required more than minor rewording of existing text.
Martini was replaced in the middle of July by microbiologist
Guido Rasi, a member of AIFA’s administrative board, who has been
described in the Italian press as being close to the far-right party
Alleanza Nazionale, which forms part of Berlusconi’s coalition
government. Even more worryingly, the government, which took
office in May, says it plans to reduce AIFA’s power by separating the
pricing of drugs from technical considerations of their efficacy, bringing
pricing back into the health and welfare ministry.
At a time when all countries are struggling to find a way to pay
for hugely expensive new-generation drugs within limited budgets,
this makes little sense. The autonomous agency needs to be able to
integrate all technical and economic information if Italy is to operate
a cost-effective health system. More over, the health and welfare
ministry’s connections with industry are uncomfortably close. For
example, the wife of the minister Maurizio Sacconi is the directorgeneral
of Farmindustria, the association that promotes the interests
of the pharmaceutical industry.
In fact, Berlusconi’s government has shown unsettling tendencies
to allow industrial interests to gain influence over state agencies. A
few weeks after Martini’s dismissal, the Italian space agency was put
into the hands of a commissioner who heads the space division of the
aerospace giant Finmeccanica. The government should think twice
about whether it really wants to open the door that was deliberately
closed after the Poggiolini affair. ?
667
www.nature.com/nature Vol 454 | Issue no. 7205 | 7 August 2008
Che dire... la comunità scientifica internazionale e le riviste scientifiche più autorevoli non smettono mai di sputtanarci continuamente, ora per una ragione ora per l'altra. Per quanto riguarda la Sanità, poi, essa è completamente delegittimata, gia dai tempi di Livia Turco, quando Nature parlò di "Sanità ai maccheroni", per le brillanti imprese dell'allora ministra. Si comprende quindi bene perché l' opposizione non faccia il diavolo a quattro su questi conflitti di interessi e schifezze dell'attuale governo, che ci fanno additare al pubblico ludibrio dalla comunità scientifica internazionale. Quanto questo giovi al prestigio scientifico internazionale dell'Italia (e, di riflesso alla sua economia),è facile da capire, ahimè.