By James Giannecchini on November 13, 2012
It seems like ancient news but it is not: Federaisf, the Federation of Associations of Scientific informants, collected and sent to the President of the Council of Ministers Mario Monti, to Corrado Passera Minister of Economic Development and Infrastructure and Transport, to Renato Balduzzi Minister of Health, and to the Undersecretary for Economy and Finance Gianfranco Polillo, a letter with the collection of signatures which contains 1125 signatures in favor of the abrogation of paragraph 11 bis of article 15 of law n. 135/2012, or the infamous "Spending Review". We don't want to be ironic, it's not up to us, but with this government the forms of protest don't seem to work, either light or more threatening. Scientific whistleblowers felt obliged to make their voices heard on the matter, perhaps with a little delay given that the Spending Review has been animating the protests of various categories for months, but probably Federaisf has only left precedence to those who were more involved, but given the miserable results, even scientific representatives felt obliged to take a stand against the rule which obliges the indication of the active principle in the recipe; rule that could also cause some difficulties for informants: “(The rule, Ed.) poses the problem of unconstitutionality because it is clearly in contrast with the provisions that regulate the free market. Without any savings or benefits for the State; penalizing most of the pharmaceutical companies resulting in the loss of thousands of jobs among drug sales representatives”. These are the words of Roberto Bevilacqua national secretary of Federaisf. We believe that if not even the pharmaceutical companies, neither Italian nor foreign, with pressure and threats, have managed to move the "iron discipline of the scissors" that animates this technical government by one iota, it will certainly not be the many signatures collected by the Federation of scientific informants that will make the various ministries reform. Obviously Federaisf has done the work it could do, when it deemed it right to do so and in the ways it is permitted, correctly and with dignity, but no responses from the public are to be expected.
