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Opinion
Nature 392, 421 (2 April 1998) | doi:10.1038/32960
Open Innovation Challenges
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Assistant Professor
- University of Texas
- Austin TX United States
Fellowships
- Brighams and Women's Hospital
- Boston, MA
Support for a pragmatic health minister
Abstract
Cancer patients in Italy are threatening their own survival through faith in a miracle cure. But the government is justified in sanctioning controlled tests of the therapy, even if it lacks a scientific basis.
Astonishingly and scandalously, a frail 85-year-old physician, Luigi Di Bella, has managed to precipitate a crisis in relations between the public, science and government in Italy with his brand of cancer therapy, a cocktail of vitamins and minerals that also includes the drug somatostatin. Dismissed as ineffective by the scientific establishment, the therapy has nevertheless been hailed as a miracle cure by the public.
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