The Italian Society of Medicine (SIM) was recently founded, a network of associations committed to the protection of health. Within them, in fact, there are doctors and dentists who claim the right and duty to operate in full freedom and autonomy, without any pressure, imposition, economic, political or any kind of conditioning. Basically, the intent – as stated on the official website of the SIM – is to protect the health of patients by identifying the best treatments in compliance with the code of ethics and the constitution. What has been written so far, however, is simply a sort of summary of the reasons behind the creation of the Sim as well as the objectives pursued by it, which in reality are very broad. Precisely for this reason we interviewed Dr. Luigi Marcello Monsellato, president and coordinator of the SIM, who explained to us in detail what are the principles that guide the SIM and the reasons that led to its birth.
What prompted you to create the Sim?
Surely the fact that we are living in a truly absurd situation at the medical and health level. Unfortunately, the doctors were forced to adapt to the impositions that we of the SIM deem unconstitutional, and it is precisely to face this discontent that winds among us that we have decided to create the SIM, which is a network of associations. In fact, we do not accept single people but only associations, in order to be able to create a critical mass over time.
What is the medicine you believe in based on?
We start from the fact that medicine must obviously be based on evidence. Furthermore, it must be based on primary prevention, prophylaxis and above all on personalized therapy. This is because, for example, if you look at Covid, you notice that not everyone is affected in the same way by the virus: many people are not touched by it in the least, others are positive but asymptomatic, still others have few symptoms and finally very few individuals have important symptoms. Therefore it is essential to evaluate the risks and benefits of any treatment individually, because everyone has a different ability to react to external threats. Our approach therefore is based on curing the person rather than an external reality. We think that there is no external problem, but that the outside creates a problem inside because the latter allows it: in practice, an external reality can affect when there is a fertile ground that allows it.
So do you also think that it is important to promote a correct lifestyle?
Certainly. We must offer people a lifestyle suitable for well-being and health. In fact, ours is an education project to live well, which implies a whole series of factors such as following a correct diet and physical activity.
What do you think about the way institutions have handled the pandemic?
I state that we want to avoid a clash with the institutions: we simply want a confrontation – which we have been asking for months – with which to give voice to two different visions of the same reality. Obviously we do not exclude the fact that there is an emergency that must be addressed with the classic methods of official medicine, however there are various critical issues related to the way in which the government has responded to the pandemic. Suffice it to say that tobacconists have always remained open and cigarettes have been sold, thus not protecting people’s health. So let’s go back to the previous discussion of the correct lifestyle, which was not taken into consideration at all by the institutions, which continued to argue that the only solution lay in the vaccine. Then think of the famous watchful waiting and tachipirina: we have many demonstrations of doctors – myself included – who, by rebelling against these government guidelines, and treating the patient immediately, have obtained excellent results.
Speaking of doctors, are there known names inside the Sim?
Yes, there are several well-known doctors and university professors who have decided to abandon the power and prestige they had acquired to try to reclaim concepts such as freedom and value. Characters now in the limelight who explain unequivocally that there is also another way of seeing things, such as Dr. Luca Speciani, the pediatrician Eugenio Serravalle or the endocrinologist Giovanni Frajese.
Is your idea to found a new medicine or do you really want a “return to origins”?
We want a recovery of medicine in the truest sense of the term. For us there is no other medicine, there is simply medicine as it has always been and with which, however, unfortunately, we have recently lost touch. Medicine has now become eccentric to the patient’s needs as well as influenced by economic pressures. We, on the other hand, want free medicine.
So, in conclusion, what are the fundamental principles pursued by the SIM?
They are the following: freedom of expression, freedom of treatment, freedom of therapy and absence of conflict of interest with pharmaceutical companies.
[di Raffaele De Luca]