Storm after the words of the M5S leader who asked for more transparency for the rules concerning relations with the pharmaceutical industry
“A concentrate of extremely dangerous disformation”. This is how Beatrice Lorenzin defines Beppe Grillo's statements about Umberto Veronesi who "advertises mammograms on TV, perhaps receiving subsidies for his institute" and about the "too high costs of drugs for hepatitis C". “Political propaganda – notes the minister – has an insurmountable limit, people's health. Grillo's words touch on a theme as delicate as that of cancer”.
Lorenzin also points out that "all the data, and scientific evidence, tell us that the most effective weapon, sometimes the only one, to defeat cancer is prevention". The minister then gives the example of breast cancer, which “women can defeat thanks to mammograms and protocol checks. This – she continues – is one of the cases in which the data speak clearly, so much so that the mortality of women from breast cancer is much lower in those areas where screening plans and mammograms involve a higher percentage of women”.
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On the cost of medicines, then, "even Grillo – continues the minister – should know that Italy is the Western European country that manages to get them at the lowest prices". As for the United States, singled out today by Grillo as an example of transparency, the minister points out that “America is certainly not an example in terms of pharmaceutical spending. On innovative and therefore expensive drugs such as the one for Hepatitis C we got the best price ever, while in America even the Senate and Congress wanted to investigate the cost of this therapy”.
Grillo: Veronesi advertises mammograms, does it have subsidies? –"Veronesi advertises mammograms on TV so, probably, he has subsidies for his institute". Beppe Grillo says it during the March for Citizenship Income. "This is real politics, I'm not an alien," says the leader of the M5S who calls for transparency for the rules concerning relations with the pharmaceutical industry. “We need clear and transparent laws like in the USA. We need transparency to know who finances what”. Grillo also gives the example of drugs to treat hepatitis C: They are drugs that cost too much, the pharmaceutical industry must be forced to make lower costs”.
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Lobby, Italy in the transparency classification fund: "There is no law that regulates them"
Presented in Brussels on Transparency dossier.
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ccording to the report, the strongest lobbies in Europe are those financial. According to the estimates of Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) the financial sector spends 120 million dollars per year for lobbying in Brussels and employs more than 1700 lobbyists. Other industries, like that pharmaceutical, from the telecommunications and ofpower, spend rivers of money on lobbying activities. It is difficult to know exactly how many, given the absence of transparency obligations. But if it is true that only pharmaceutical companies officially employ 40 million euros per year (although some estimates speak of 91 million euros), these are certainly numbers with many zeros.
With the exception of a few judicial scandals, in Italy little or nothing is known about the ways in which the choices of public decision-makers and the interests that influence it mature. Everything remains opaque and inaccessible. There is a lack of codes of conduct for those who exert pressure on the political chambers and those who make politics are not prevented from repurposing themselves as lobbyists and vice versa. On this, in any case, we are in good (bad) company: only in Slovenia, among the 19 European countries, is a period of time imposed to be able to transit from one position to another. In the United States, for example, the break period must last at least two years.
Extract From Il Fatto Quotidiano | by Elena Ciccarello | April 15, 2015
Pharmaceutical. Question by Giulia Grillo (M5S) on the hospital expense allowance
Mammography, Grillo is right: "It is disinformation that kills"
