“The pandemic has shaken the foundations of healthcare and amplified a crisis that can no longer be ignored: if it was right to reform the health system years ago, it was a serious mistake not to help medicine to rethink itself, and therefore to rediscover the lost harmony between medicine and society“. In his latest essay between the limits of unparalleled science Ivan Cavicchiphilosopher of medicine, professor of Logic and Philosophy of Science at the University of Tor Vergata in Rome, analyzes fractures and contradictions between the complex system of rules and principles of medical science and the reality of the patient.
And “The incomparable science: medicine, doctors, the sick” (Castelvecchi Editore) was the subject of a debate in Rome organized with the unconditional contribution of Boiron. The event, which was held at the National Hotel, was attended by Filippo Anelli, president of the National Federation of Orders of Doctors and Dentists (Fnomceo), Francesco Cognetti, president of Foce (Federation of oncologists, cardiologists and hematologists), Maria Luisa Agneni, pulmonologist and coordinator of the Non-Conventional Medicine Commission of the Omceo in Rome, Maria Domenica Castellone, researcher and doctor, group leader in the Senate of the 5 Star Movement, member of the Permanent Health and Hygiene Commission, and Silvia Nencioni, president and managing director of Boiron Italy.
“The main problem of medicine – says Cavicchi – is that today its conceptual apparatus, its classes and its methodologies no longer coincide with social complexity. Scientific and experimental medicine has stood still, while everything else has changed: the patient, the complexity of the disease, the idea of nature, of the law. All these things have disoriented medicine, so we need to find a way to make it fit again with society. The main problems arise from these biases, which are problems of trust, first of all, on the part of society towards medicine ”.
A company, according to Cavicchi, “paradoxical” because “medicine is making great strides on a scientific level, yet society trusts science less and less and wants to participate directly“.
Cavicchi in his book suggests some proposals: “The training of the doctor must be radically rethought – underlines the teacher – it is still a reductionist training: we must rethink it in terms of complexity. We must also rethink the value of the relationship, which should not be understood and trivialized as kindness and good education. The relationship is a source of knowledge. In addition to these new challenges, there are also systemic challenges: we live in a healthcare system that is throttled by resource problems, the doctor is impoverished in terms of autonomy and budgetary problems. We must also find a balance with economic problems, it is not an impossible undertaking but we need to change our minds, passwords and perspectives “.
“The main need that Cavicchi expressed in his book – he says Maria Luisa Agnenipulmonologist and coordinator of the Non-Conventional Medicine Commission of the Omceo in Rome – is that of to replace the attention for the study of the disease with the study of the patient. This does not mean that the disease must no longer be taken into consideration, indeed it must always be studied with passion but must also be accompanied by the study of the person who suffers. The study of the patient and the recovery of professional authority by the doctor remains the right way to go in trying to rethink our medicine and our profession.”.
Cavicchi’s book “is very much in tune with our vision – the comment by Silvia Nencioni, president and CEO of Boiron -. We we strongly believe that it is essential to rethink today’s medicine, the whole paradigm of medicine. Medicine today has made incredible progress from a scientific point of view but it has not gone hand in hand with progress from a social point of view. It is necessary and it emerged from this meeting how the center of gravity must be shifted from the disease to the patient because there is no patient equal to the other. Therefore it is impossible to think of enclosing all medicine within a priori paradigms. Therefore, we are also very much in line with the professor’s thinking regarding the fact that more decision-making autonomy should be left to doctors, a real and concrete autonomy. As a pharmaceutical company we want to contribute in order to promote events like this, with speakers of this caliber and so different also in their roles but so important so that thanks to these debates we can then concretely take a step forward. Because step by step – he concludes – we can really get to the incomparable medicine that Professor Cavicchi tells us about “.