State of pharmacological research and quality of information provided to the scientific community and patients. These are some of the topics covered in the conference on the subject «The future of medicine», which closed the 2008 Science Festival in Rome. Alongside the enormous progress made in recent years in terms of prevention, treatment of diseases and improvements in living conditions, problematic aspects remain. Silvio Garattini and the Englishman Iain Chalmers have drawn attention to the invasiveness of the pharmaceutical industry; on his ability to use hidden channels to convey messages; on the neglected needs of patients and doctors; on the "tricks" with which the results of the effectiveness of new drugs are manipulated. Given that 60 per cent of research is funded by industry, it is realistic to expect that fields of investigation will be determined essentially by commercial interests. However, according to Hippocratic indications, it is also right to demand that new drugs take into account the impact on the patient's general health. Certainly avoiding that, resulting in an improvement of the pathology for which they are used, they cause a worsening of other vital functions, or even – as Chalmers has shown – death. This is linked to the fact that medicines for children are not tested on them, as the World Health Organization denounced last December with the "Appropriate medicines for children" campaign. The data is shocking: 50 percent of pediatric drugs have never been studied on children, for example the much used cough medicines. This is an approach that sees them as miniature adults, according to a convenient economic calculation: starting an ad hoc trial is expensive, and requires overcoming many legal obstacles. But if, from an entrepreneurial perspective, the data is not surprising, doctors remind us that children are much more than small replicants: instead they are growing and evolving organisms, with a particular metabolism, so that a non-specifically tested drug can harm its development. The need for greater transparency and systematic monitoring of the progress of research by the scientific community should also be underlined. This also translates into the need to publish studies whose results are contrary to expectations, so that information is circulated that can serve as future guidelines. In the light of this, for some years now, the provision of article 48 of law 326 of 2003 has been welcomed, also at an international level, according to which every year pharmaceutical companies must pay 5 percent of the total amount of expenses supported by them for the promotional activities of the Italian Medicines Agency (Aifa). The hope is that, in this way, not only commercial ends are pursued and that effective interaction can thus be built between the research community. On the other hand, there is the delicate question of the doctor-patient relationship, often unfortunately set at a hierarchical level. It has been said for some time that it is necessary to listen to the patient, and that the doctor must consider him as a whole, having for him that Care that Hyginus, in one of his Fabulae, indicates as the divinity to whom Saturn entrusts men, for everything the course of their life. The invitation to patients not to see in the doctor the one who gives healing and salvation through a pill,
