When it is claimed that the human species will be able to adapt to climate change, the first thing to do is to establish what ‘adaptation’ means, because this word is used to refer to profoundly different processes and, above all, because in everyday language it often ends up taking on a reassuring meaning that it does not possess in biology.

In biology, the adaptation of a species refers to the change in the population comprising it in response to environmental pressure; however, as Darwin taught us, this does not occur because individuals somehow equip themselves to tolerate certain biotic or abiotic factors, but rather through selection. Essentially, a large proportion of a population dies off, and if natural selection has favoured certain individuals by endowing them with traits capable of withstanding such pressures, the descendants of those bearing these traits will increase in number, so that the resulting population will change in composition. As we can see, it is a process that we might describe as bloody and deadly: adaptation, within the mechanism of natural selection, means that few survive and many perish, and the population, or species, survives because the descendants of those few survivors re-establish a lineage that will carry the traits of resistance.

No individual effort can alter individuals to make them fit: one either perishes or survives in the lottery of evolutionary genetics.

Returning, then, to the question with which the interview with Tozzi begins, we might well ask ourselves what the tolerance of our naked bodies – given our current average physiology – would be when subjected to heatwaves and the scorching climate that awaits us, were we to have no other means of adaptation than the ‘natural’ one. The human body can, within certain limits, modify its response to environmental conditions: repeated exposure to heat alters the efficiency of sweating, blood flow distribution, plasma volume and various behavioural aspects that contribute to the maintenance of body temperature. Even populations that have lived for many generations in different environments exhibit physiological characteristics derived from their evolutionary history. All this broadens the range of tolerable conditions, but does not eliminate the physical constraints of an endothermic mammal. The heat produced by metabolism must be dissipated into the environment and, when temperature and humidity render this dissipation insufficient, the body’s compensatory capacity reaches its limit. There are therefore conditions in which human physiology, even after acclimatisation, is simply overwhelmed; moreover, we Europeans are among the least well-equipped, and we reach this lethal limit before other populations.

This point is essential when discussing the future of our species. To say that Homo sapiens could adapt to radically different climatic conditions is by no means the same as saying that humans as they exist today – their numbers, their geographical distribution or the forms of society in which they live – will be preserved. A species may prove to be perfectly adapted following a drastic reduction in numbers, the disappearance of entire populations or intense differential selection amongst individuals. From an evolutionary perspective, the persistence of a species is a very different outcome from the preservation of the living conditions of its members.

In our case, however, the picture is made unique by a characteristic that has accompanied much of the history of Homo sapiens: a huge proportion of our adaptive capacity lies outside the body. We live in environments where our physiology alone would not suffice, thanks to clothing, housing, heating and cooling systems, the controlled supply of water, food production, energy networks, medicine and the entire technical and social infrastructure that creates, around each individual, an environment distinct from the immediate physical surroundings.

What we call technological adaptation can therefore be regarded, in a broad functional sense, as a highly developed component of our extended phenotype. A human being living at forty degrees, with access to water, air conditioning, a continuous supply of energy and suitable accommodation, faces a biologically different environment from that faced by a person with an almost identical physiology who lives at the same temperature but without access to those resources. The external climate is the same; the overall set of conditions affecting the individual is profoundly different.

The extended human phenotype also possesses a crucial property: a considerable part of it can be passed down through generations. This transmission does not require a genetic change. Economic capital can be passed on to children and, with it, access to better housing, technology, education, safer neighbourhoods, the ability to move around, and the social networks through which resources and protection are obtained. An advantageous position within the environment can therefore be inherited through economic and institutional means.

Natural selection continues to act on individuals, but it now encounters individuals whose phenotype includes a significant external component. Some of the differences in fitness resulting from climate change may depend on the ability to maintain this extended phenotype and to pass on at least part of it to offspring. In a situation where extreme heat increases mortality, for example, the selectively relevant difference may lie far less in the physiology of two people than in the fact that one is able to live in a cooled environment whilst the other is not. If this capacity for protection is associated with wealth and is passed on to children, an economically heritable component of the phenotype contributes to the intergenerational persistence of the advantage.

It is within this context that our reliance on technology as a general solution to climate change must be viewed. Technology truly represents the most powerful expansion of our species’ adaptive capabilities and is likely to continue to do so. We can cool buildings, desalinate seawater, modify crops, build defences against certain extreme events and rapidly transfer resources between regions that are very far apart. A considerable proportion of the effects of future global warming can certainly be mitigated in this way.

However, this observation does not imply that technology can protect everyone and preserve the existing order indefinitely. The technology that constitutes our extended phenotype exists within complex material and social systems on which it is constantly dependent. An air-conditioner requires energy and an electricity grid capable of supplying it precisely during a heatwave, when millions of other air-conditioners are simultaneously increasing demand. A desalination plant requires large amounts of energy and infrastructure to transport the produced water to where it is needed. Technologically advanced agricultural production depends on machinery, fertilisers, irrigation systems, credit and international trade. Equipment must be manufactured and repaired, whilst raw materials and components must continue to circulate.

Technological protection is therefore a property of the system within which that technology operates. The mere fact that humanity knows how to build something does not guarantee that every human being will have access to it, nor does it guarantee that those who have access to it today will necessarily continue to have access to it under very different environmental conditions.

Here, a second aspect of adaptation emerges that is easily overlooked. A beneficial phenotype always depends on the environment, and a change in the environment can radically alter the value of traits that had previously led to success. This principle applies to an anatomical trait and also to a property of the extended phenotype.

In today’s societies, substantial financial resources are probably one of the most powerful means of individual protection against almost any climate-related risk. Those with a great deal of money can live in better homes, afford energy even when it becomes expensive, secure water and food, access healthcare, insure themselves against certain risks, and relocate if a particular region becomes less habitable. Wealth enables one to rapidly acquire almost all the other components of the extended phenotype.

This advantage, however, depends on a condition that is generally left unstated: money must continue to be worth something and must remain convertible into the resources one needs. Financial wealth provides protection as long as there are markets in which to buy what is needed, institutions that guarantee contracts, functioning monetary systems and the physical availability of the required goods. Money constitutes a right of access to resources, not the resource itself.

The same issue applies to ownership. Owning a house is an advantage as long as that house remains habitable; owning agricultural land is an advantage as long as that land continues to produce or retains an exchange value; owning technological infrastructure is useful as long as there is energy and the capacity for maintenance. The adaptive value of the current extended phenotype therefore depends on an economic and institutional environment that is usually assumed to be stable.

Climate change, however, can alter that very environment. It can render unproductive areas that currently generate wealth, alter water availability, displace populations, change the strategic value of regions and resources, and contribute to the formation of new geopolitical balances. Some states may benefit from new trade routes or a relatively improved availability of certain resources, whilst others may lose economic, productive or political capacity. The consequences of climate change can therefore extend far beyond temperature and go so far as to alter the very structures upon which the maintenance of the extended phenotype we use to protect ourselves from the climate itself depends.

The vulnerability thus becomes recursive. We rely on technology to shield ourselves from an ever-increasing proportion of environmental conditions; that technology depends on energy, resources and economic organisation; these, in turn, depend on political and geopolitical relationships that may be altered by environmental change. Our primary adaptive solution therefore belongs to the very same system that is being disrupted.

In a world where these structures continue to function well, it is reasonable to expect that wealth, technological expertise and the ability to control infrastructure will continue to represent a significant advantage. A more profound change, however, could create a selective landscape very different from the current one.

Under certain circumstances, direct access to resources may matter more than the financial capacity to purchase them. Those who control water, food production or energy sources may find themselves in a better position than those with nominally greater wealth but who depend on markets that can no longer supply those resources. In the event of a severe breakdown of the political order, the ability to directly defend one’s possessions or to exercise coercive force could also become important. The availability of weapons – which is currently of secondary importance compared to the advantages afforded by money and institutions in many developed societies – could take on a completely different significance in an environment where public authorities are no longer able to effectively guarantee access to essential resources.

We cannot know whether such a scenario will come to pass, nor is there any evolutionary necessity for it to do so. However, it is precisely this inability to predict the new selective landscape that prevents us from treating current conditions of security as a guarantee for the future. The mistake lies in taking what currently results in optimal adaptation and projecting it unchanged into a profoundly transformed environment. Evolutionary history shows precisely the opposite: when selective pressure changes, what constitutes an advantage may change – and the extended phenotype, like any phenotype, can undergo a profound shift in value as environmental conditions vary.

Inequality also plays a part in this process. When the resources necessary for survival are abundant, enormous differences in wealth can be maintained within a system in which even those with little retain sufficient access to essential goods. If a resource becomes severely scarce, that same inequality gives rise to a different situation. The advantage enjoyed by those who control that resource grows, whilst at the same time the pressure exerted by those excluded from it increases.

A very large disparity in the availability of water, food, energy or habitable land can therefore directly intensify competition. The owner of an essential resource possesses something that is increasingly valuable; those who risk not surviving without that resource have an ever-greater incentive to obtain it. In extreme conditions, the legal structures that determine who is entitled to possess it are also subjected to the pressure generated by scarcity.

Legal safeguards are, in fact, part of the extended phenotype and the social environment that attributes value to it. Ownership exists materially as control over a thing, but the exclusive right to that thing depends on institutions capable of enforcing it. As long as the state possesses sufficient administrative and coercive capacity, a title of ownership allows its holder to control a resource without having to defend it personally. If that capacity diminishes, the practical significance of the title can change rapidly.

From this perspective, even the security of those who currently find themselves in the privileged segment of the distribution cannot be considered independent of the stability of the entire system. Great financial wealth offers extraordinary protection as long as there is an order that allows it to be converted into real assets; ownership of resources offers an advantage as long as that order allows one to retain control over them; technology provides protection as long as the production and energy system that underpins it continues to function. The extended phenotype of the wealthiest individual therefore remains linked to a collective environment over which they do not have complete control.

It is here that hope in technological developments reveals its ambiguity. Usually, this implies that humanity’s technical capabilities will enable the species to continue to survive on the planet even under very harsh climatic conditions. This possibility is entirely reasonable. However, if it is also meant that technological innovation will prevent severe natural selection amongst individuals, preserve current societies and guarantee the existing population the continuity of their living conditions, this requires much stronger assumptions – and ones that are almost always poorly justified.

Technology can, in fact, reduce one form of selective pressure whilst simultaneously creating or amplifying another. If survival in hot climates increasingly depends on air conditioning, reliable access to energy becomes the key factor. If water requires desalination or large-scale transfer projects, access to the infrastructure that produces it becomes crucial. If food production becomes more dependent on sophisticated technical systems, the value of the ability to maintain them increases. Rather than disappearing, natural selection simply alters the set of characteristics through which it acts, with the same effect as ever: the preservation of well-adapted individuals, and the death of most others.

The same innovation may also accentuate the difference between those who have access to the necessary extended phenotype and those who cannot afford it. A society may possess the technology capable of keeping a person alive under certain conditions without having the capacity – or choosing – to make it available to everyone. From the perspective of the species, the technical solution exists; from the perspective of the individual who is excluded from it, that solution is irrelevant.

This allows us to see more clearly what adaptation really means in our case. Homo sapiens possess a body with certain physiological limits, an extraordinary capacity to modify their environment through an extended phenotype, and economic, cultural and institutional transmission systems that enable a considerable part of that phenotype to be inherited. Climate change affects the entire system. It can exceed the physiological limits of some individuals, alter the value of the technologies and resources that protect them, change the economic conditions through which those resources are distributed, and transform the political balances that ensure control over them.

The resulting adaptation may therefore take forms very different from that implied by the reassuring assertion that ‘we’ll manage thanks to technology’. It may certainly involve new technology and societies capable of using it effectively, but it may also involve a significant differential mortality rate between those who possess and those who do not possess the necessary extended phenotype, migrations that redistribute populations, a loss of value in previously advantageous forms of wealth, new hierarchies determined by control over resources, and transformations of institutions under competitive pressure.

In evolutionary terms, none of these outcomes would be incompatible with the assertion that the species has ‘adapted’. Precisely for this reason, that word, used on its own, should frighten us rather than reassure us. What matters, in fact, is who will manage to adapt, through which characteristics and within which social order. We must ask ourselves what value the extended phenotype – which we currently regard as a form of protection – will have then, and whether it will be possible to pass it on to the next generation, taking into account the capacity of technological, economic and institutional structures to continue reproducing the conditions upon which their very functioning depends.

The security we currently enjoy does not provide an answer to these questions, and this should be particularly relevant to the West and the fortunate inhabitants of the most favourable regions of the planet. It describes the position of an individual or a population within the current selective landscape. If the climate contributes to changing this landscape profoundly, the characteristics through which the ability to survive is acquired, maintained and passed on will also change.

Finally, there remains an even more fundamental problem, because the argument that a new technology will eventually protect us presupposes that it will have time to arrive. In nature, a population subjected to rapidly increasing environmental pressure may disappear when change proceeds faster than the emergence, spread and fixation of the traits that would enable survival under the new conditions. It is not enough for a suitable phenotype to be biologically possible: it must emerge soon enough, be present in the right individuals and spread before selective pressure has reduced the population below a threshold from which it can no longer recover.

A very similar problem exists in the context of technological adaptation, although the mechanism of transmission is different and the timescales can be much shorter than those of genetic evolution. A technical solution must be designed, tested, scaled up for industrial production, manufactured in the necessary quantities, integrated into infrastructure and finally distributed to the populations that need it. Each of these steps takes time. If climatic pressure alters living conditions more rapidly than the technical system can produce and disseminate an effective response, natural selection takes effect before the solution becomes available. A technology that would have been sufficient ten or twenty years later may be irrelevant to a population that, in the meantime, has lost the ability to sustain itself.

The extraordinary pace of human innovation does not, therefore, eliminate the problem of relative timescales. The statement "we will find a solution" implicitly contains a prediction regarding the relationship between at least two rates: the rate at which environmental pressures grow or shift, and the rate at which we are able to generate, develop and distribute the new, expanded phenotype required to address them. The fact that the latter has at times outpaced the former in our history does not constitute a law that must continue to hold true for any intensity or pace of future change.

There is also an even more insidious difference compared with the normal evolutionary problem. The ability to rapidly produce new technological phenotypes is not an invariant property of the species. Modern science and advanced technology require societies that are sufficiently wealthy and stable to sustain universities, laboratories, costly infrastructure, long-term education systems, reliable energy networks, specialised industries and large international networks through which people, tools, data and ideas circulate. The capacity for innovation that we today tend to project onto the future is itself the product of specific historical conditions.

A society under severe climate pressure may find itself forced to allocate an increasing proportion of its resources to managing the current emergency, diverting them from the investments on which future solutions depend. Rebuilding destroyed infrastructure, ensuring food and energy supplies, managing migration, supporting strained healthcare systems or funding security apparatus may become politically more urgent than maintaining research programmes whose results will only materialise many years later. In this way, the very pressure that makes innovation necessary can simultaneously reduce the capacity to produce it.

The same dynamics can play out through geopolitics. Contemporary scientific innovation relies heavily on international cooperation, the mobility of researchers and production chains spread across many countries. Conflicts, political isolation and the fragmentation of international relations can disrupt these networks and reduce scientific capacity at precisely the moment when it is most needed. There is no need to imagine extreme future scenarios to recognise the system’s vulnerability: in the United States, there are already major disruptions to the funding and organisation of federal research, whilst the Russia-Ukraine conflict has led to the migration of researchers, a loss of scientific capacity and the breakdown of international collaborations. These phenomena are not caused by climate change, but they demonstrate just how rapidly political decisions and geopolitical crises can undermine some of the conditions on which the capacity for innovation is based.

The climate crisis can interact precisely with this kind of dynamic. Changes in agricultural production, water availability, migration and shifts in the strategic value of territories can increase internal and international tensions, encourage protectionist policies and divert resources from cooperation to competition. If this happens, the scientific and technological system on which we rely for adaptation may become less efficient precisely because of the indirect consequences of the pressure to which it is supposed to respond. Research thrives more readily in conditions of stability, resource availability and cooperation; conflict and isolation, on the other hand, can fragment the networks on which it relies.

This creates another potentially dangerous feedback loop. Climate change increases the need for innovation; its economic and geopolitical consequences may reduce the conditions conducive to innovation; a reduced capacity for innovation leaves a larger proportion of the population exposed to climate-related pressures; this increased exposure may further exacerbate instability and competition. Technology cannot, therefore, be treated as an external variable that automatically grows in line with the increasing need for it.

This is precisely where the limitation of techno-optimism lies. It assumes simultaneously that we will know which technology will be needed, that we will be able to develop it soon enough, that we will maintain the economic and scientific conditions necessary to produce it, that we will maintain the infrastructure necessary to use it, and that we will be able to distribute it widely enough to prevent selective pressure from taking its course. Any one of these conditions may occur; none is guaranteed by the current existence of a technologically advanced civilisation.

The analogy with natural adaptation is therefore once again particularly instructive. A population may, in principle, possess an evolutionary pathway towards a phenotype compatible with the new environment and yet become extinct because the environment changes more rapidly than its ability to adapt to it. A civilisation may, in principle, possess the knowledge to construct a new, expanded phenotype and yet fail to do so in time, or lose, during the crisis, the economic, scientific and political conditions necessary to complete its construction.

The likelihood of Homo sapiens continuing to exist is very different from the likelihood of technology protecting all human beings from the consequences of rapid climate change. Between the two lies natural selection: that which operates directly through our physiological limitations and that which operates through the varying availability of an extended phenotype capable of protecting us. If the technological response arrives too late, remains confined to a section of the population, or becomes more difficult to produce just as environmental pressure is mounting, the species may still adapt, but it may do so in the ordinary way that adaptation occurs in nature: through the survival of some and the loss of others.

This is why reliance on technology cannot replace the prevention of selective pressure.

However, compared with natural mechanisms of adaptation – including those linked to our extended phenotype – our species possesses certain characteristics and current resources that can go a long way towards preventing the most harmful aspects of the next phase of selection.

We will discuss this further in the following section.

Tonight’s eclipse will therefore pass over Greenland, Iceland and Spain, where the umbra will leave Earth at sunset, just beyond the Balearic Islands, over the Mediterranean, and will serve as a foretaste of the even more spectacular eclipse due to take place next year – one of far greater significance, with a total phase lasting nearly six and a half minutes, among the longest of the century. Today’s eclipse will cross a narrow strip of land and sea stretching from Arctic Russia, passing through Greenland, touching parts of the far west of Iceland, a tiny portion of Portugal and a wide swathe of Spain. The total phase will not last long – between one and a half and two minutes – exceeding two minutes only off the Icelandic coast and in certain parts of Greenland. To mark the occasion, the European Space Agency is organising a live stream of the event starting at 7.30 pm, which you can follow by clicking on this link.

Today’s total eclipse will therefore consist of five phases. The first is the moment when the Moon’s disc begins to overlap with that of the Sun, and this will continue for around thirty minutes; the second will be one of the most spectacular, during which a sort of ‘diamond ring’ will be visible in the sky, because beams of light will be produced whilst the last fragment of the Sun’s disc is still visible. Immediately afterwards, totality will begin – an early night that will last a maximum of 2 minutes and 18 seconds, depending on the location from which it is observed. Then we will once again be able to see brilliant ‘pearls of light’ around the lunar disc, and finally the Moon will slowly reveal the Sun once more. However, from Italy it will not be possible to witness all five phases because, not only – as we have already mentioned – will totality not be visible anywhere in the country, but also because the phenomenon will occur at a time very close to sunset.

What is a solar eclipse?

A solar eclipse occurs when the Moon passes directly between the Sun and the Earth, casting a narrow band of shadow onto our planet. During the totality phase, a sort of twilight sets in, the temperature drops and some animals may alter their behaviour. The phenomenon is made possible by a particular coincidence: the Sun is about four hundred times larger than the Moon, but it is also about four hundred times further away from Earth. For those in the right position, therefore, the two celestial bodies appear to be of similar size and the Moon is able to completely cover the Sun’s disc, revealing the corona, the outermost part of the Sun’s atmosphere. The partial phases, from the start to the end of the Moon’s passage in front of the Sun, will last around one hour and 45 minutes. A partial eclipse will also be visible across much of Europe, Canada, the northern United States and north-western Africa. The difference compared with a total eclipse is, however, enormous: even with just 1 per cent of the Sun still visible, its brightness remains around four thousand times greater than that of a full Moon, explained Alain Doressoundiram, an astrophysicist at the Paris Observatory.

On average, one or two solar eclipses occur each year, but the part of the world where totality can be observed is very narrow. A given area of the Earth may therefore have to wait around four hundred years before witnessing the phenomenon again. The next total eclipse, on 2 August 2027, will cross southern Spain, North Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, with a totality lasting up to six minutes and 23 seconds. A longer eclipse will not occur until 2114.

How to watch the solar eclipse safely

The solar eclipse taking place this evening before sunset poses no direct risk to human health – such as effects on pregnancy or nutrition – with the sole exception of permanent damage to the eyes caused by looking directly at the sun, even for a short time. The Ministry of Health has published a series of recommendations on this matter. Before observing the eclipse, it is essential first of all to wear specific eye protection – sunglasses are not sufficient – and to keep them on at all times. The primary risk is damage to eyesight: looking directly at the sun or a solar eclipse, even for a short time, can cause permanent damage to the retina – known as solar retinopathy – without causing any immediate pain. The risk is increased in the case of repeated observations, even if brief. The damage may become apparent hours or days later.

There is only one safe way to view the eclipse directly: look at the sun using special eclipse glasses that are certified to meet the ISO 12312-2 standard. Any other method must be avoided as it does not always guarantee safe protection: as mentioned earlier, sunglasses are not sufficient, nor are X-ray film, homemade filters, welder’s goggles, camera lenses or anything else. Children and young people are at greater risk, as their eyes are more easily damaged and because the fascination of the phenomenon may draw them towards looking at the sun. For them, observing the eclipse should take place under the constant supervision of adults, who must ensure that children and young people wear the appropriate glasses at all times. Older people, those with pre-existing eye conditions, or those who have undergone certain eye surgeries may be at greater risk.

Second statement: the majority of countries would achieve high vaccination coverage "through trust, not through obligations". In 2024, thirteen European countries had at least one compulsory paediatric vaccination. Italy has had 10 since 2017, whilst France increased its number from 3 to 11 in 2018. And between 2014 and 2024, six countries — Croatia, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy and Poland — introduced or extended mandatory vaccination. Where the rationale is documented, it contradicts the order’s claims: the report accompanying Germany’s 2020 Masernschutzgesetz states in black and white that the measures taken up to that point to increase willingness to be vaccinated had not been effective, after measles cases had doubled in 2018. Europe has tightened its requirements precisely because trust alone was not holding up; Washington cites Europe as a reason to relax them. Then there is section 2(b), the ideological core. It mandates splitting the trivalent measles-mumps-rubella vaccine into three separate injections and administering each vaccination during distinct visits. But there are no authorised monovalent vaccines in the US; there is no published evidence of any benefit in splitting them; and splitting them up increases the number of injections for children, resulting in incomplete vaccination schedules. The American Academy of Paediatrics established this back in 2009. The monovalent vaccines were withdrawn from the market that year: recreating them would mean new clinical trials, new manufacturing facilities and new FDA approvals. Years.

The truly incredible detail, however, is something else entirely. The proposal to separate the MMR vaccine has an author and a date: Andrew Wakefield, at a press conference in 1998, following the article subsequently retracted by The Lancet due to fraud. In 2026, a presidential decree made the operational recommendation of the author of a study retracted for fraud into national health policy. Regarding aluminium, section 3 calls for alternative adjuvants. The matter has already been settled: a systematic review published in the BMJ on 6 May 2026, comprising 59 clinical studies including 11 randomised trials, data up to November 2025, and a formal assessment of the risk of bias. No association with autism, type 1 diabetes, asthma or myalgia. As for the rest, reports from small studies, at risk of serious or critical bias; no credible evidence of causality. The authors work for the Canadian public health agency, not for a vaccine manufacturer.

Other recommendations are also flawed: hepatitis A and hepatitis B appear simultaneously in both the ‘high-risk groups’ category and the ‘shared clinical decision-making’ category. A paediatrician consulting this guide to understand what to do would be at a loss. Four paragraphs, two incompatible lists. And here comes the part that explains everything else. Section 4 does not mention vaccines: it instructs the Department of Justice to bring legal challenges against state laws and makes federal funding conditional upon the granting of religious exemptions. Except that no federal right to a religious exemption from state vaccination requirements exists, and it is Congress—not a presidential order—that conditions federal funding. It will end up in court, and whoever drafted it knows this full well: Section 5(c) states that the order does not create any new legal rights. What we have here is self-certification as a political signal. A signal aimed at whom, and above all, when? As of 7 August 2026, the United States has recorded 2,465 cases of measles – more than in the whole of 2025, the worst year since 1991. Ninety-three per cent of these cases involve unvaccinated individuals or those with unknown vaccination status. The threshold for maintaining elimination status is the interruption of endemic transmission of the measles virus for a period of 12 months or more, under high-quality surveillance: the US had already recorded over ninety cases at the start of the year, involving local rather than imported transmission, and the outbreak in Utah has been ongoing for more than twelve months.

The Pan American Health Organisation will make its decision in November. The mid-term elections are held in November. One of these deadlines appears to have dictated the timetable for the other, and it is not the one relating to public health. Democracy, as always, dies in anti-scientific charlatanism.

He is a master at devising evocative metaphors; he has convinced half the Western world that plants think, communicate, suffer, remember… perhaps even have political leanings. One might feel envy for his success, but not for his scientific reputation. Among those who strive for intellectual honesty, there is little sympathy for those who use rhetorical devices to dupe enthusiasts of environmentalist thought or individuals devoted to New Age-style beliefs, while at the same time employing their technical and scientific expertise to counter the arguments of colleagues who seek to expose them as false. Is this a secondary or unintended consequence of freedom of thought? Perhaps.

Mancuso is indeed an expert on real phenomena, namely electrochemical signals or the release of volatile compounds in response to stress, which alter root growth in accordance with chemical gradients. To these signalling phenomena, he applies a mentalistic lexicon without any theoretical justification. Roots ‘decide’. Forests ‘speak’. Mimosas ‘learn’. The logical leap from electrochemistry to cognition – which in neuroscience would require decades of experimental work and rigorous operational definitions – is made by Mancuso with the nonchalance of someone who knows that the TED Talk audience will not ask for the raw data. Mancuso is not naive. He uses his skills to do the opposite of what he claims to be doing. He says he wants to spread knowledge about plants, but in reality he propagates a mysticism of botany which retains only a superficial vocabulary from science, whilst possessing the deep structure of esotericism: the hidden world that only the initiate can see, the truth that official science refuses to admit, nature that speaks to us if only we know how to listen.

Lincoln Taiz, one of the most authoritative living plant physiologists, together with a dozen colleagues, has published a systematic critique in "Trends in Plant Science" of so-called ‘plant neurobiology’, the academic field of which Mancuso is a co-founder and leading proponent. Their central argument is blunt: without a centralised nervous system, without neurons, and without information-integrating structures comparable to those found in animals, applying concepts such as ‘intelligence’, ‘memory’ and ‘learning’ to plants is not a bold discovery; it is a misuse of terminology that obscures rather than illuminates. Words in science have operational definitions, not poetic values. Plant neurobiologists, write Taiz and colleagues, “have consistently overlooked the remarkable degree of structural and functional complexity that the brain had to evolve for consciousness to emerge. […] the probability that plants, with their relative organisational simplicity and lack of neurons and brains, possess consciousness [is] practically zero’. Insects and squid have neural structures that foreshadow a form of consciousness. But for now, conscious plants remain confined to science fiction stories. Moral guilt towards nature – deforestation, climate change, industrial agriculture – is an emotionally addictive trope. Discovering that plants suffer and communicate transforms the reader into a sensitive witness to a cosmic tragedy. It is a powerful, psychotropic sedative for collective anxiety about scenarios perceived as dystopian.

Mancuso’s true masterpiece lies in having carried out this operation within the context of a respectable academic career, complete with a professorship, international awards, but above all a regular presence at cultural festivals, where the audience applauds him without understanding. He is the perfect model of the postmodern populariser: scientific enough not to be dismissed as a charlatan, vague enough not to be discredited as a scientist. An epistemically invulnerable position, and therefore a privileged one in pseudo-cultural contexts. Some might still say: ‘So what? He’s not doing any harm.’ It depends. A professor who teaches, paid from public funds: things that certainly won’t help his students form a meaningful understanding of the plant world. He does cause some harm.

But there is academic freedom! Quite rightly, only the peer community, through peer review and the assessment of curricula, can defend scientific culture from ridicule and from becoming a source of harm to students, who are in a position of epistemic asymmetry vis-à-vis the lecturer. If decisions were taken at a political level, it would be just as possible to ban heliocentrism. The mechanisms exist: course accreditation, which should include an explicit assessment of the scientific soundness of the curriculum content and not merely its formal aspects; scientific societies in the relevant fields can produce position statements defining what is scientifically sound for teaching; professional bodies, where they exist, should condemn training that produces professionals with false beliefs about empirical mechanisms. Academies should exist not only to lobby, but also to produce documents that distinguish between what is scientifically established and what is mere misleading rhetoric for those who study and wish to learn what is produced through the scientific method. But academic freedom is always misused as a shield, and institutions rarely have the courage to distinguish between the protection of genuine critical thinking and that of organised error. Meanwhile, plants, oblivious to all this, continue to photosynthesise. Not because they have decided to do so. Nor because they remember doing it last time. But because they have enzymes that function in a specific and necessary way. It is less anthropomorphic. But it is reality, according to the facts.

What OpenAI actually published on 1 August is already slightly different from this version. The title chosen by the company refers to ‘ten breakthroughs’, and the results include both solved problems and substantial progress towards their solution. However, the material is far more substantial than a press release: it comprises around 250 pages of mathematics, accompanied by a reconstruction of the process followed by the model, and each proof has also been translated into a form that can be automatically verified by a specialised programme. OpenAI states that the mathematical arguments were generated by Astra, whilst humans prepared the manuscripts with the help of the model itself and took responsibility for their accuracy.

This makes the case particularly interesting, as it offers far more material to scrutinise than the usual claims about the performance of artificial intelligence. And mathematicians immediately set about doing just that.

The first finding of the review concerns one of the very sentences that made the announcement so sensational. In the version initially published, OpenAI stated that the ten problems were open and had seen no progress on the main result for at least ten years, and in most cases for much longer. That sentence no longer appears today. It has been replaced by the far less ambitious statement that Astra has solved or made progress on long-standing open problems. The web archive preserves both versions, so the change is fully verifiable.

The correction was necessitated primarily by two of the results that had initially attracted the most attention. One concerns an ancient problem which, to put it very simply, seeks to establish how densely spheres can be packed when moving from familiar spaces to spaces with an enormous number of dimensions. Astra achieved a new limit – in other words, a genuine mathematical result; however, Steven Miller, a mathematician at Yeshiva University, observed that a key step in the proof had already appeared in a paper published in 2016 in collaboration with Henry Cohn, and accused OpenAI of failing to give adequate credit for its origin. Miller went so far as to speak of plagiarism and scientific misconduct. At present, this is an accusation made by one of the researchers involved, rather than a judgement issued by a journal or a scientific integrity body; nevertheless, the issue of attribution that he has raised is a genuine one.

The second case is even more instructive, because it shows just how wrong it would be to swing from initial enthusiasm to the opposite conclusion and dismiss the whole thing as a sophisticated act of plagiarism. For many years, mathematicians had been wondering whether there existed at least one member of a certain vast family of abstract objects that did not possess a property thought to be perhaps universal. Astra constructed one, thereby settling the question of its existence. However, upon examining the proof, Francesco Fournier-Facio of the University of Cambridge and other specialists recognised two key elements drawn from papers published in 2016 and 2019. Here too, therefore, the original portrayal of a field that had remained largely stagnant for at least a decade did not hold up.

Yet one of the authors of those earlier papers, Andreas Thom, has provided on MathOverflow a far more interesting assessment than the summary verdicts – for or against – that are popping up everywhere. According to Thom, Astra has found a creative way to combine the two previous results, overcoming an obstacle that prevented their direct application. Thom explains that he himself had been searching, ever since the 2019 paper, for a mechanism capable of making that strategy work, and states that he admires the efficiency of the construction found. The novel idea, therefore, does not lie in having invented a theory out of thin air that no one had ever conceived: it lies in having seen how existing pieces could be linked together to reach a point their authors had not yet reached. In mathematics, this too is called research, and it can be very good research.

This is probably the most important aspect of the entire experiment. A large language model possesses an extraordinary ability to explore combinations, follow a line of inquiry at length and reassemble tools developed in different contexts. Senén Barro, director of the Artificial Intelligence Research Centre at the University of Santiago de Compostela, observes that current systems seem particularly effective precisely when the problem is well-defined and the solution can be constructed using elements that have some precedent in the literature. The creation of entirely new concepts and new theoretical frameworks remains another matter altogether. Astra’s work suggests, however, that between the repetition of something known and the establishment of a new theory lies a vast territory – and it is precisely this territory in which a substantial part of real-world mathematics takes place.

Automatic verification of proofs must also be properly contextualised. Computer-based checking is of great value, as it allows us to establish – with a degree of certainty that would be difficult to achieve by reading through hundreds of pages – that the formal steps do indeed follow from the stated premises. However, this method cannot determine whether an idea is truly new, whether it was published seven years earlier in an equivalent form, whether the correct citation has been omitted, or whether a result deserves the importance attributed to it in a press release. For this reason, following the machine-based verification of proofs, mathematicians began their own examination of the literature and the history of the problems. Within a few days, this latter process had already significantly altered the interpretation of at least two of the most important results.

Then there is the figure most likely to stick in the headlines: $2,000. OpenAI states specifically that the number of tokens required to find the published solutions would cost roughly that amount at its API rates. This is an interesting figure, as it shows just how low the marginal cost of producing a search of this calibre can be once a model capable of doing so exists. However, it does not tell us how much it cost to achieve those ten successes: the denominator is missing. We do not know how many other problems were submitted to Astra without yielding any results, how many attempts failed before arriving at the selected examples, what human labour was required to select the problems and verify the results, nor what proportion of the enormous resources needed to build the model should be taken into account when assessing the overall efficiency of the process. Barro used a very simple analogy: the cost of a winning lottery ticket does not tell us how much the player spent, unless we know how many tickets they bought. The $2,000 reported by OpenAI may therefore be a perfectly accurate measure of what the company claims to be measuring and, at the same time, insufficient to support the claim that ten research-level maths problems were ‘solved for $2,000’.

This distinction becomes even more necessary when the technology’s developer is also the one promoting its capabilities. OpenAI operates in a sector where continually demonstrating the increasing capabilities of its models also serves to justify investments on an extraordinary scale. Reuters has reported a forecast of approximately $25 billion in cash burn for 2026, whilst the company continues to plan massive investments in computing capacity. A mathematical result does not become any less true for this reason; however, it is essential to carefully separate the scientific content from the promotional context in which it is presented.

This situation takes on particular significance because, in the same announcement, OpenAI explicitly refers to the Leiden Declaration on AI and Mathematics, drawn up by the mathematical community and endorsed by the International Mathematical Union. That document calls for the use of artificial intelligence to be disclosed, for precedents to be cited accurately, and for work expedited by machines not to place an unsustainable burden on reviewers. Addressing public decision-makers, it also contains a highly pertinent recommendation: the technology industry has strong commercial incentives to exaggerate the capabilities of its systems, and to assess its claims, specialists should be consulted rather than relying on press releases.

This is exactly what happened with Astra. The press release was published on 1 August and, within a week, specialists from various fields had begun scrutinising hundreds of pages, tracing the lineage of ideas and publicly debating which parts of the findings were genuinely new. OpenAI has already amended one of its strongest claims, whilst discussions continue and the evaluation of the other results will inevitably require further work.

Following this examination, Astra appears perhaps less miraculous than the initial headlines suggested, and more interesting than the dismissive reactions would have us believe. A general-purpose artificial intelligence system has produced, in a single campaign, a considerable amount of professional-level mathematics, achieving results in at least some cases that specialists consider significant. In one of the most talked-about cases, it identified the connection that one of the authors of the previous tools had been searching for unsuccessfully since 2019. At the same time, the initial account of the state of research was overly favourable to the sensational nature of the announcement; some attributions have been disputed; and the much-cited cost of $2,000 describes only part of what would be needed to assess the experiment’s effectiveness.

The most significant story of recent days therefore also concerns what happened after Astra had finished its work. Producing a proof, establishing how much it owes to previous literature and determining its true scientific significance are tasks that can now be distributed in a new way between machines and people. The speed with which the mathematical community has corrected the narrative – without, however, discarding the results that have stood up to scrutiny – shows just how important such scrutiny will become when producing hundreds of pages of research costs less and less. If Astra truly points to the future of AI-assisted mathematics, these first few days have demonstrated both its capabilities and the system of checks and balances it will require.

With one caveat – the usual one – which we can summarise in a question: who will actually have access to Astra and equivalent models, at what cost, and with how much transparency? At present, for example, Astra is not available outside OpenAI; for this reason, if the science of the future is truly to be one of collaboration between AI and humans – that is, if this model works well and proves superior to the traditional one – we run an ever-greater risk of it becoming the monopoly of a few, rather than remaining, by definition, an open and democratic endeavour.

The site proposed by the authors consists of alkaline hydrothermal vents fed by serpentinisation, a reaction between water and ocean floor rocks that produces hydrogen and creates metal-rich environments capable of facilitating chemical transformations. The mineral walls are criss-crossed by a network of tiny cavities in which substances can become concentrated, whilst the difference in acidity between the hot spring fluids and seawater provides a natural gradient that can be used as a source of energy. In this scenario, the chemistry necessary for life began before cells capable of producing it entirely existed: some reactions took place thanks to biological molecules and primitive proteins, whilst others were catalysed by iron, nickel, cobalt and other catalysts present in the rock.

That primordial form of life was not merely a mixture of organic substances. The last universal common ancestor of bacteria and archaea, known by the acronym LUCA, already possessed a genetic code, the ribosomes that read that code, and the system necessary for synthesising proteins. LUCA was not the first living entity to appear on Earth, but rather the most recent common ancestor from which all present-day cells are descended. According to the new reconstruction, its enzymatic metabolism was still incomplete: it could transmit genetic information and produce enzymes, whilst continuing to obtain from the environment some of the reactions and compounds essential to its existence.

To trace back to such a remote stage, the authors compared the enzymes present in 552 bacterial genomes and 401 archaeal genomes, examining both the sequences and the three-dimensional structure of the proteins. The structure preserves traces of kinship for longer than the sequence and therefore allows the recognition of homologies that billions of years of evolution have made difficult to identify. Starting with the approximately four hundred reactions by which modern cells produce amino acids, nucleotides and cofactors from simple substances, the researchers attributed 166 enzyme families to LUCA. A further 89 are thought to have emerged along the branch leading to the ancestor of modern bacteria, whilst 38 belong to the archaeal branch; for other families, the distribution is too fragmented to allow for a definitive assignment.

The part of metabolism dedicated to the production of nucleotides, on which DNA and RNA depend, appears to have been essentially complete in the common ancestor. The synthesis of amino acids, cofactors and numerous intermediates of carbon metabolism, on the other hand, still has significant gaps. The difference has an understandable significance: the informational function of nucleotides – and therefore of the genetic code – could not be delegated to rock, whilst many of the chemical reactions necessary to produce simpler molecules could still be catalysed by the metals present in the hydrothermal vent. For almost half of the reactions considered, the authors cite experiments in which the same step, a similar step or an entire metabolic sequence takes place in water without enzymes, in the presence of metals and under conditions compatible with a hydrothermal system.

The earliest form of metabolism would therefore have been distributed between the organism and the environment in which it lived. Hereditary molecules and proteins ensured biological continuity, whilst the environment provided reagents, catalysts and energy. The distinction between organism and environment, which today appears clear-cut, was then more blurred: removing that system from the mineral pores would have meant depriving it of an essential part of its biochemistry.

Autonomy is thought to have been achieved when organisms began to replace the functions of rock with components produced by their own metabolism. Cofactors – small molecules that help enzymes transfer electrons or chemical fragments – are thought to have acted as mobile and selective substitutes for solid metals. A mineral catalyst can promote many different reactions without any particular precision; an enzyme associated with its own cofactor, on the other hand, recognises specific substrates and allows natural selection to control the rate of individual steps. The metabolic network thus acquired the ability to produce internally even the tools necessary for its own functioning.

It is at this point that the history of life splits into two. Bacteria and archaea inherited the genetic code, the ribosome and a substantial part of their metabolism from LUCA, but each completed what was still missing independently. The study identifies five reactions for which the two kingdoms of microorganisms employ enzymes that lack a recognisable common structure. Since the chemical transformation is the same whilst the proteins carrying it out belong to different families, the simplest explanation is that bacteria and archaea independently devised two solutions to the same problem.

Independence from the original hydrothermal source also required autonomous energy production. A free cell must maintain a difference in ionic concentration between its interior and exterior and utilise the flow of ions to power ATP synthesis. In hydrothermal vents, the gradient was provided by the geology; outside the source, it had to be generated by the cell. According to the proposed reconstruction, the two lineages developed different mechanisms to link energetically favourable reactions to the pumping of ions across the membrane, thereby replacing the natural gradient with a biologically constructed one.

The membranes, too, took different paths. In bacteria, membranes are composed mainly of molecules similar to simple fats, whilst in archaea they are made up of different, more resistant molecules, arranged in a mirror-image pattern and with different bonds. The constituents, their chemical arrangement and the enzymes that produce them all differ. This separation, known as the ‘lipid divide’, is so profound that it has fuelled decades of debate over what type of membrane LUCA possessed. The authors’ model suggests that the earliest enclosing structures were very simple membranes, formed spontaneously from molecules present in the environment, and that it was only later that bacteria and archaea independently developed the enzymatic systems necessary to build their own modern membranes.

At the end of the process, two cellular forms capable of moving away from the source had emerged from the same biological matrix. They shared the language of the genetic code and the fundamental functioning of ribosomes, but differed in the composition of their membranes, in numerous enzymes and in the mechanisms used to manage energy. The genetic code and biological descent would therefore have had a single origin, whilst the independent cell, capable of living without the catalytic support of the rock, would have emerged twice.

This interpretation inevitably encounters the limitations imposed by the depth of time. Genes may be lost, replaced or transferred from one group to another, and many archaeal enzymes remain poorly characterised. The authors themselves acknowledge that greater knowledge of bacteria may make the innovations within their branch appear more numerous. Geochemical analogues have been demonstrated for only part of the network, whilst the other reactions will require as yet unknown catalysts or different explanations. The work therefore offers a coherent reconstruction supported by genomic comparisons and chemical experiments, not a direct record of events that took place almost four billion years ago.

However, the separation of bacteria and archaea does not mark the end of the story of cell evolution. Much later, an archaeon belonging to a lineage related to the present-day Asgard group entered into a stable relationship with a bacterium closely related to the Alphaproteobacteria. The bacterium became the progenitor of the mitochondrion, whilst the association between the two partners contributed to the emergence of the eukaryotic cell, from which animals, plants, fungi and numerous single-celled organisms are descended. The precise sequence of events remains a matter of debate, but the endosymbiotic origin of the mitochondrion and the host’s archaeal ancestry are supported by converging phylogenomic data.

Eukaryotes still bear the marks of that union. The systems governing the reading and transmission of genetic information show a strong archaeal ancestry, whilst the mitochondrion and numerous metabolic functions derive from a bacterial contribution. Recent studies indicate that the composition was even more complex, with genes originating from other bacteria acquired during a long period of interaction within microbial communities. Even the central metabolism of eukaryotes retains a chimeric structure, in which components from the archaeal host and the bacterial partner have been integrated and reorganised over the course of more than two billion years.

The eukaryotic cell can be regarded, in this sense, as a third solution. It does not represent a simple return to the state prior to the separation, because bacteria and archaea had by then accumulated their own innovations and deep-seated incompatibilities. Symbiosis brought together elements of both genetic heritages within a new organisation, in which the descendant of the bacterium continued to produce energy as a mitochondrion, whilst the archaeal heritage provided much of the host cell’s information system and structure.

The narrative suggested by this new research therefore begins with a form of life that could not have existed without its hydrothermal vent. From that shared dependence, two distinct ways of forming a free-living cell emerged, remaining separate for long enough to become the two major primary branches of evolution. When some of their descendants eventually came together again, their integration gave rise to eukaryotic complexity. The geological environment had initially accomplished what life was not yet capable of; subsequently, bacteria and archaea ‘learnt’ separately to take over this role, whilst the eukaryotic cell – our cell – arose from the ability to combine, within a single system, the achievements gained along both paths.

The most revealing moment came when Dana Bash asked him whether he accepted any responsibility for the resurgence of measles, whilst the US is experiencing its second consecutive year with case numbers not seen for decades. Kennedy replied “absolutely not”, attributing the outbreak to the lockdowns imposed during the Covid pandemic and stating that the US was managing measles better than any other country. He then claimed to have contained the outbreaks “at record speed”, thanks to phone calls to governors and the deployment of federal epidemiologists. On 30 July, the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention had recorded 2,371 cases since the start of the year – more than the 2,289 recorded in the whole of 2025 – with 37 outbreaks and 94 per cent of infections linked to one of them. The two years under the Trump administration thus saw more measles cases than the United States had recorded in the rest of the century.

Kennedy added that the affected communities were almost exclusively religious groups opposed to vaccination, going so far as to claim that the Mennonites had been refusing vaccines since 1796, the year of Edward Jenner’s discovery. By referring to communities that are closed off and distrustful of the state, the secretary is able to portray the epidemic as the product of a distant tradition, removed from the influence of contemporary politics. The data paint a broader picture: national coverage with the MMR vaccine amongst children starting school has fallen from 95.2 per cent in 2019–2020 to 92.5 per cent in 2024–2025, leaving around 286,000 children in a single cohort below the level of protection required to prevent sustained transmission. In many communities, the rate is even lower, whilst 93 per cent of cases in 2026 involved people with no documented vaccination.

The immunity deficit accumulated during the pandemic is certainly contributing to the current situation and would require a vigorous federal campaign, based on a clear, consistent message and widespread access to vaccination. Kennedy, however, spent the early stages of the 2025 outbreak presenting the vaccine as an individual choice, promoting vitamin A and attributing extraordinary qualities to doctors who proposed treatments lacking adequate evidence. It was only in response to Dana Bash’s insistence, on 2 August, that he looked into the camera and urged parents to vaccinate their children, acknowledging that two doses provide protection in 97 per cent of cases. A few minutes later, he reopened the debate on the alleged link between vaccines and autism, claiming that much of the childhood vaccination schedule had never been properly studied and that scientific authorities had ignored contrary evidence. The call to get vaccinated was thus framed within a narrative designed to cast suspicion on the entire system that produces, evaluates and recommends vaccines.

Measles represents the point at which Kennedy’s political responsibility takes on its most evident form, because his institutional power has come into conflict with the reputation he has built as the leading American figure in the anti-vaccination movement. The other ongoing infectious disease emergencies follow different biological trajectories, and all are confronted by a federal system that the new administration has chosen to make smaller, less stable and more dependent on political decisions at the top.

Between 1 May and 27 July, the CDC received reports of 6,707 confirmed cases of cyclosporiasis acquired in the United States, with 423 hospitalisations and cases reported across 45 states. A further 11,500 cases were awaiting confirmation or testing to rule out infection acquired abroad. The increase compared with the same period in 2025 prompted the agency to publish weekly updates, whilst one of the outbreaks was linked to iceberg lettuce distributed across nine states.

Cyclospora has characteristics that make active surveillance essential: the doctor must request a specific test, diagnosis may be delayed, and tracing the food chain requires data collected in a standardised manner. Since July 2025, FoodNet – the network that actively monitors foodborne infections across an area covering approximately 16 per cent of the US population – has been required to focus its activities on Salmonella and Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli. Monitoring of Cyclospora and five other pathogens has become optional. A system designed to actively seek out cases has been transformed, specifically for this parasite, into a patchwork dependent on the resources and priorities of individual states.

The cyclosporiasis outbreak thus provides a concrete example of the link between an administrative decision and a loss of epidemiological capacity: the infectious agent is transmitted via contaminated food, whilst the speed with which it is identified depends on the network that collects diagnoses and links cases together. Kennedy stated that the situation was under control, whilst the numbers continued to rise and thousands of reports remained to be classified. The phrase ‘under control’ belongs to the realm of political communication; epidemiological control requires staff, laboratories and comparable data – precisely the resources that his administration has cut back on.

The West Nile virus season has also got off to an unusual start. By the end of June, 48 cases had been recorded – almost five times the average observed by that date since 2004 – and 38 had developed the neuroinvasive form. By 28 July, the number of cases had risen to 113. The spread of the virus depends on its circulation amongst birds and mosquitoes, as well as on temperatures and environmental conditions, whilst community protection relies on entomological surveillance and coordination with local pest control services. ArboNET continues to collect data on human and animal cases; however, its effectiveness depends on health departments being able to sample mosquitoes, diagnose infections and transmit information rapidly.

Added to this picture is the rise in US cases of clade I mpox, which have become more frequent since March 2026 and had risen to over thirty by July. The risk to the general population remains low, and almost all cases involve people who have travelled to countries affected by outbreaks or their contacts. International surveillance is the first line of defence in this instance, as it enables the identification of transmission areas, the issuing of warnings to travellers, and the preparation of laboratories to distinguish between the different clades of the virus. In January 2026, following a decision by the Trump administration and with Kennedy’s full support, the United States completed its withdrawal from the World Health Organisation, thereby ceasing its regular participation in its mechanisms for cooperation and information exchange.

These four phenomena vary in severity and origin; taken together, they demonstrate how irrational it is to weaken an epidemiological network at a time when the occasions on which that network must prove its effectiveness are increasing. In March 2025, the department headed by Kennedy announced a reduction of around 10,000 staff members, which was set to be combined with retirements and voluntary departures, bringing the total workforce down from 82,000 to 62,000. For the CDC, the official plan envisaged a reduction of around 2,400 posts; by the end of the year, between redundancies and resignations, the agency had lost around a quarter of its staff. The HHS assured that essential services would remain unaffected, whilst the departments concerned reported a loss of expertise and operational disruptions.

During the administration’s first hundred days, an Associated Press investigation identified more than a dozen federal health data collection programmes that had been scrapped or compromised. The government also withdrew $11.4 billion earmarked for state and local health departments, affecting staff and infrastructure built up during the pandemic and used to tackle broader infectious disease threats. Some of the funds were recovered through the courts, with varying outcomes between the states that had brought legal action and those that remained outside the litigation. The overall picture remains clear: the capacity to monitor the health of the population was treated as an administrative expense open to cuts.

Kennedy applied the same criterion to vaccination policy. In June 2025, he removed all seventeen members of the Advisory Committee on Immunisation Practices in a single move, explaining that their continued presence would have prevented the Trump administration from securing its own majority before 2028. The committee, which assesses the efficacy and safety of vaccines, was thus reconstituted through a selection process controlled by the secretary, who has for years contested the conclusions reached by vaccine research. In January 2026, the administration attempted to scale back the childhood vaccination schedule; a federal court suspended that decision along with the votes cast by the new committee, leaving the previous schedule temporarily in force.

Preparations for future epidemics have undergone a similar intervention. In August 2025, Kennedy ordered the cancellation or scaling back of twenty-two Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority investments dedicated to mRNA vaccines, justifying the decision with a general assessment of the platform’s inability to protect against respiratory infections. The evaluation of individual projects was replaced by a blanket rejection of the technology, resulting in a reduction in the options available when a new virus emerges for which speed of development will be a decisive factor.

During the CNN interview, Kennedy described this process as a battle for freedom and a return to true science. His idea of science, however, amounts to a personal authority that chooses which studies to recognise, declares organisations that reach unwelcome conclusions to be corrupt, and bases the evidence for his own arguments on documents cited out of context. When Dana Bash reminded him that the National Academy of Sciences maintains there is no causal link between vaccines and autism, Kennedy cited another report from the same institution and carried on as if the statement he had just heard did not exist. The tactic involves creating enough noise to cast doubt on every fact, leaving it to the most aggressive voice to declare itself the winner.

Infections are not covered by this treatment. Measles is transmitted when it encounters people without immunity; Cyclospora continues to circulate in food as long as cases remain unlinked; West Nile follows mosquito populations; and mpox crosses borders alongside infected people. The secretary’s words influence vaccination coverage and the organisation of institutions, whilst viruses and parasites respond to the biological conditions created by human choices.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. can blame Fauci for the lockdowns, the Mennonites for the measles outbreak, and laboratories for the origin of diseases that have been known for decades. He can call the loss of thousands of staff ‘reform’ and present the replacement of experts with people hand-picked by political powers as a way of restoring trust. Meanwhile, cases continue to pile up in the statistics that have survived the cuts, revealing the cost of a public health system led by the country’s foremost purveyor of health misinformation. The verbal acrobatics come to an end where the transmission of an infectious agent begins; at that point, the ramblings of the chief liar of the American health system are worth exactly nothing.

The scene could be interpreted as the latest episode in the personal feud between two doctors who, since the early months of the pandemic, have been clashing in front of the cameras in Congress. This interpretation captures a real element, because Paul has turned his conflict with Fauci into a private vendetta nurtured for years, with calls for criminal charges, referrals to the Department of Justice and statements in which the final outcome of the investigation was already a foregone conclusion. In July 2023, he filed an initial criminal complaint; in July 2025, he renewed it, also challenging the validity of the pardon granted by Joe Biden; in 2026, he became chair of the Committee, summoned Fauci, released over a thousand pages of his diaries without redacting personal data, and prepared the contempt proceedings.

Paul’s obsession centres on the psychopathology of power, but its institutional application is now firmly entrenched in American politics, as a significant section of the Republican Party has recognised that hatred of Fauci is a resource to be exploited to their own advantage. The immunologist who headed the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for thirty-eight years, serving both Republican and Democratic presidents and tackling AIDS, anthrax, Ebola and Covid, has been reduced to the very embodiment of everything that the Trumpist movement regards as hostile – that is, the embodiment of expertise that places limits on political will.

Decisions taken during the pandemic may be subject to criticism, as may the funding granted by the National Institutes of Health, the oversight of research conducted in Wuhan, and the public statements made by those who held such high-level responsibilities. Even the indictment of David Morens, a former senior adviser to the NIAID, for the alleged destruction and removal of federal documents makes it legitimate to demand that every individual’s conduct be investigated. However, a legally sound process should reconstruct the facts, distinguish between responsibilities and allow the conclusion to follow the evidence; in this case, Fauci’s guilt had been proclaimed before the hearing was convened, whilst the hearing served to produce the evidence needed to justify a punishment that had long been promised.

The question of the origin of SARS-CoV-2 remains unresolved, with differing assessments even amongst US intelligence agencies, whilst published scientific evidence continues to support, above all, a zoonotic origin. The distinction between research capable of modifying certain properties of a virus and the regulatory category of particularly dangerous experiments has also fuelled terminological controversies that cannot be resolved by retroactively choosing a definition to turn a response into perjury. A Republican-led House subcommittee, having investigated the matter in 2024, found no evidence linking Fauci to any wrongdoing; over 150 scientists and doctors have now pointed out that no credible evidence has been produced to support the most serious allegations levelled against him.

This does not prevent the process from achieving its objective, because the objective is not to clarify the origin of the pandemic. The complexity of the evidence is incompatible with a political machine that needs a recognisable culprit and regards every hesitation as a confession, every change of judgement as a lie, and every discussion amongst researchers as proof of a secret agreement. Fauci’s diaries reveal the uncertainties that accompanied the investigation into a newly emerged virus – uncertainties that had already been largely recounted in his memoirs and interviews; selected and disseminated by those who had vowed to imprison him, those very same uncertainties are now presented as evidence of a conspiracy.

Trumpian anti-intellectualism is not merely a distrust of experts; in reality, it fundamentally denies the existence of any method, independent of power, for establishing what is true, replacing verification with loyalty and technical dissent with suspicion of treason. Science thus becomes one of the defeated factions; its representatives may be treated as officials of the previous regime; and error – which is inevitable when managing a new crisis – retroactively takes on a criminal nature when it has contradicted the victor’s preferences.

Fauci is the ideal target to satisfy the schadenfreude of those who have interpreted the pandemic as a conspiracy by the elite against the people, because his trial allows years of resentment to be channelled into a visible punishment – the longed-for handcuffs for a scientist – and a foretaste of that ‘Nuremberg for science’ so often called for in our part of the world as well. The imprisonment evoked by Paul constitutes the narrative conclusion demanded by a conspiracy-theory community that has been promised that, behind the masks, vaccines and restrictions, lies a deliberate crime. Collective suffering is thus attributed to the actions of a single man, and his public shaming restores to his followers the illusion that their beliefs have finally prevailed over the institutions that had refuted them, and that evil has, in the end, been punished, in favour of the reason they have always believed they possessed.

The pre-emptive pardon granted by Democratic President Joe Biden in January 2025 was explicitly intended to protect Fauci from unjustified and politically motivated proceedings. The decision was problematic because it shielded an official in advance from possible judicial investigations, but subsequent events have shown the danger it was intended to prevent. The pardon is now being presented as evidence of guilt, whilst Paul argues that it would deprive Fauci of the right to refuse to testify; at the same time, any inaccuracy made after the pardon could constitute a new offence not covered by the measure. The hearing has therefore created a situation in which silence can be prosecuted as contempt and speech can form the basis of a charge of perjury. Legal experts themselves note that the possibility of prosecuting Fauci faces constitutional obstacles that remain unresolved.

The message intended for the scientific community falls into this trap. Anyone who accepts a public office must be aware that no career, no service rendered and no scientific documentation will be able to protect them when a political majority decides to make them the scapegoat for a crisis. The researcher called upon to advise the government learns that a cautious forecast may be re-examined years later as evidence of deception, whilst the civil servant defending the autonomy of their agency realises that the next change of government may expose them to proceedings orchestrated by those who have already announced the punishment.

Democracy does not require scientists to govern, but rather that the government be subject to constraints external to its own will, including scientific evidence, professional expertise and procedures capable of distinguishing established facts from erroneous hypotheses. When political power can choose a despised expert, declare him guilty before its supporters and use parliamentary instruments to send him to prison, the force of facts is replaced by the fait accompli of authority. The persecution of Anthony Fauci therefore concerns far more than the assessment of the pandemic: it shows what fate awaits any institution tasked with setting reality against the demands of power, when those in government believe they no longer need to answer to anything other than their own majority – and ultimately, to nothing other than their own will.

Planting trees for their beauty serves no purpose other than to cause further pain to those who love them and watch them struggle for a drop of water

I am aware that our generation was brought up on Heidi and that some high-profile architects are keen to produce renderings featuring lush flowerbeds, but if you then go and measure just how much the temperature actually drops, you realise the sad truth. Sad truths are always the result of measurements. Numbers are among the tools we use to understand the gap between our dreams and reality – that is, between election slogans and day-to-day administration. A study by the University of Manchester, published in "Landscape and Urban Planning", directly measured the temperatures of grass and concrete in an urban environment. Well, green grass – but only when it is well watered – reaches temperatures just 0.3 degrees lower than that of the air. But this effect disappears as soon as the grass is dry: which is to say, all summer long. If you go to a country house or a park right now, you’re more likely to be treading on dry vegetation rather than green lawns on which to play football or write poetry. With no moisture to evaporate, the sun heats the air instantly and creates heat peaks at face level. If you do not believe the measurements – because numbers are boring – take a walk across some stubble, that is, the crop residues left after harvesting cereals, and then tell me whether or not your face feels like it is on fire. When the lawn is dry, tarmac is actually better (in terms of temperature). At At it absorbs heat slowly and releases it over the course of several hours. To be sure, it is still heat, but at least it is spread out over time. However, this entire preamble is not meant to argue: no to trees. After all, how could I possibly maintain that? I am one of those speakers who always says: more trees, more trees. But the preamble serves to highlight a crucial issue. To date, the few studies carried out on the benefits of trees in cities tell us that it is not enough to plant those sad, solitary negundo maples to beautify certain suburban landscapes. The few studies available suggest we should assess the situation carefully before planting. It is both right and useful to know a tree’s physiology inside out: whether and how, and under what conditions, it can thrive in the city, lowering the temperature and performing numerous other – and necessary – functions. Conversely, if we fail to address the complexity of the tree-city relationship and do not study the interactions between the various dimensions, then we’d be better off leaving it at the rhetoric of trees. Which, incidentally, isn’t even supported by forest nurseries; we don’t know where to produce the trees, let alone grow them, maintain them and integrate them into the metropolis. Either we do it properly or we’re wasting money, and – not least – we’re making life difficult for these extraordinary plant organisms. So let’s plant them properly, or let’s not plant them at all. To understand what ‘planting properly’ means, we can start by looking at a few studies.

Let’s return to the meadows. It is true that, under certain conditions, placing trees amongst the grass results in a moderate cooling effect (compared to trees or grass on their own), and the combination, incidentally, also has its own beauty. But just to highlight the complexity, and to reiterate that what is beautiful to us is not necessarily beautiful to nature, in the driest regions – such as Piedmont at present – natural complexes of mixed vegetation – trees and grass – do not provide any significant cooling; indeed, the cooling effect is much lower than in areas consisting solely of forest. This is because it is often impossible to irrigate. If the tree-and-grassland system presents difficulties, let’s focus on the trees. What do trees do, amongst other things? They lower the temperature, both through shading and through evapotranspiration. Let’s look at the latter: under ideal conditions, water escapes through the stomata and cools the environment (stomata are microscopic pores on leaves through which plants absorb and release gases, as well as regulate water vapour). But we are not always in these ideal conditions; after all, it is also a metaphor for life. A 2025 study, published in "Urban Sustainability" and conducted in Zurich, found that when soil moisture is insufficient – meaning the soil is not properly irrigated – trees stop cooling the air. Why? Because plants reduce evapotranspiration. Trees try to conserve water by closing their stomata; therefore, from a cooling perspective, plants perform less effectively precisely when we need them most. That is to say, it’s worse for us, but from their point of view they’re functioning very well – succulents thrive by closing their stomata during the day. How much less do they cool the air? A 2024 study published in Nature analysed 182 research papers on various cities around the world and found that, during heatwaves, trees lose up to 30 per cent of their cooling capacity. Then there is the issue of temperature. In many cases, temperatures are measured by satellite, which generally has a fixed pass time in the mid- to late morning. This data does not accurately reflect temperature variations within cities, which, as we know from experience, vary from neighbourhood to neighbourhood. However, measurements taken using sensors mounted on bicycles, motorbikes and cars are becoming more widespread and are more effective. In this way, air temperature can be recorded at any time of day or several times a day, and measured every 5 metres over a distance of 7 km.

When soil moisture is insufficient, trees no longer provide cooling. During heatwaves, they lose up to 30 per cent of their capacity

Using this methodology, it has been established (the study is published in PNAS) that the cooling effect in a neighbourhood is significant only when tree cover exceeds 40 per cent – other studies conducted by our CNR put the minimum tree cover at 30 per cent. Whether it’s 30 per cent or 40 per cent, it is clear that below that threshold, planting a few isolated trees serves no purpose. One might say: better than nothing; better a tree than a concrete pillar. However, to address a major issue such as urban heat islands – and given that we will soon be living in cities, unless some of us, the older generation, retreat to the famous, currently uninhabited ‘village hamlets’, repopulating them and giving rise to a host of problems linked to communal living – it is essential to think and act on a large scale. Speaking of measurements, how large should tree leaves be? Is a pine or a mulberry tree better? Leaf measurements lead to a paradox. Tree species with a high leaf area index – that is, large leaves – offer greater cooling capacity, both through shading and through evapotranspiration. Stand under a mulberry tree during the day and you’ll feel cooler. This isn’t just a fleeting impression. Apart from the mulberry, measurements show that the temperature drops – both at the soil surface and in the air. However, a global study (covering 596 cities) found that tall trees with dense canopies do indeed provide good cooling during the day, but can cause the temperature to rise at night. Those very same leaves that provide shade during the day become a barrier to the heat released by the ground. If you have curtains on your balcony, you will have noticed that it is best to draw them back at night, precisely to dispel that typical layer of dampness that has built up. The difference is that you can raise the curtains, but you can’t move the trees. This paradox has also been analysed at the ETH Zurich laboratories, where, using a wind tunnel, researchers sought to understand what happens in those narrow, tree-lined streets flanked by tall buildings – known in technical terms as ‘urban canyons’. It was found that medium-sized and large trees with large leaves (which occupy at least half the width of the streets) block the airflow at dusk and hinder its upward movement. Consequently, the heat accumulated in the ground struggles to rise: the temperature on this type of street is 1.5 degrees higher than on a street without trees.

So are trees with smaller, thinner leaves better (which, incidentally, require less water and can therefore be more efficient at cooling in the medium term)? Yes, because they limit the heat island effect. But during the day they provide less shade, so the ground absorbs more heat. Staying on the subject of shading: using trees to shade impermeable surfaces such as tarmac or concrete can reduce the amount of heat that would otherwise be absorbed. A 2019 study measured a temperature reduction of 6 degrees, but on the other hand, the extreme heat emanating from impervious surfaces can also trigger the closure of stomata, reducing evapotranspiration and limiting its cooling function. What’s more: trees planted in paved areas – concrete, tarmac – grow poorly; consequently, their reduced size means less shade is provided, and their evapotranspiration capacity is lowered. I realise these studies are contradictory, but not for the worse – quite the opposite. They are contradictory because trees are not neutral, nor are they soldiers in the trenches serving us. They need soil, water and care. Whilst in theory trees are essential for cooling, in practice we must enable them to do their job of cooling the air. Let’s return for a moment to concrete. A concrete surface, as well as absorbing heat, also acts as a hydraulic barrier. A Acer negundo, a Prunus, a ligustrum – in short, a tree planted in a hole in the pavement, surrounded by concrete – that tree risks being unable to benefit from rainwater, which ends up directly in the drains. So that tree, in search of water, sends its roots out in search of water, cracking concrete, tarmac and pavements. So, in essence, even though the tree balance (the difference between trees planted and felled) is required by law, and mayors are keen to boast about how many trees they have planted – even if they do not explain why they have felled trees or pruned them incorrectly – planting trees without an integrated scientific approach serves little purpose.

Studies are often contradictory because trees are not neutral, nor are they soldiers in the trenches serving us

In addition to the contradictions mentioned above, there is a risk of planting thousands of trees on pavements without a sustainable urban drainage system – without a small basin comprising a layered bed of gravel, sand and compost, a system that filters water polluted by oils and microplastics, set slightly below ground level and capable, when a storm hits, of channelling and slowing the flood wave. What is needed is an integrated approach, drawing on agronomy, forestry, engineering, architecture and urban planning. Then, of course, above all, money is needed. That might well be found, as we are talking about necessary and welcome urban changes, but it must be spent wisely. A city that has spent its money wisely – though it may seem hard to believe, given the prevailing perception – is Medellín, with its Corredores Verdes. Since 2016, they have replaced kilometres of tarmac with vegetation on three levels: grass, shrubs and tall trees. In total, there are 2.5 million plants and 880,000 trees, well above the 40 per cent threshold.

One city that has spent its money wisely is Medellín, with its Corredores Verdes. In total, there are 2.5 million plants and 880,000 trees

Clearly, they did not simply pot the sapling, as happened in Bologna and, some time ago, in Milan, but combined the vegetation with high-albedo road surfacing materials, capable of reflecting the sun’s rays rather than absorbing them. The World Economic Forum has documented the results: over three years, the average temperature in the corridor areas fell from 31.6 degrees to 27.1. Surface temperatures dropped from 40.5 to 30.2. The cost? 16.3 million dollars, which works out at 6.50 dollars per inhabitant. It’s nothing really – just a seed to help us understand how to plant trees in future cities. Trees will need to be planted, but not merely as decoration; they are infrastructure that thrives better – and helps us live better – if we understand how they work. Let’s put an end to the rhetoric and cultivate a new, integrated culture.

An animal searching for food by following its scent receives signals that are constantly distorted by the wind. At a certain point, the scent becomes strong; a few moments later it disappears, then reappears in a different direction; a single perception describes only the present situation, whilst a comparison with what was perceived shortly before allows a trend to be recognised. To make this comparison, it is necessary to retain a record of the past, by having a system that records it with sufficient precision and retains it for long enough to make it usable.

Even a cell, despite lacking a brain, constantly faces problems of the same kind. The concentration of an external substance fluctuates, molecular signals are disrupted by random fluctuations, and a complex response may only be worthwhile when the stimulus persists. The cell must therefore attribute meaning to the events it encounters over time, using biochemical circuits in which a preceding condition continues to influence the subsequent one for a few seconds or a few minutes. Biological memory begins right here, in the ability of a present physical state to retain some of the information received in the past.

Takehiro Tottori, of the RIKEN Centre for Brain Science, and Tetsuya J. Kobayashi, of the Institute of Industrial Science at the University of Tokyo, have sought to establish when this ability becomes advantageous. In their paper, published in Physical Review Letters, they describe a theoretical organism that must estimate a changing environmental condition using imperfect signals, with the option of relying solely on current perception or combining it with a record of previous observations. The system has limited resources, and memory comes at a cost, as the record must be updated and protected from fluctuations that tend to corrupt it.

The question therefore concerns the value of memory. The organism can minimise its errors by comparing the present with the past, provided that the stored information is reliable enough to justify the resources expended in maintaining it. When this condition is not met, memory adds to the noise from the environment that produced by its own internal mechanisms, perpetuating signals of little value and influencing decisions that would have been better had the past been allowed to fade away.

The first finding by the two researchers concerns the way in which the transition from one strategy to another takes place. When available resources are scarce, the theoretical organism achieves the best result by completely ignoring memory and reacting to the perception of the moment. Even a rudimentary memory requires an investment, whilst the trace it manages to retain remains too weak and noisy to adequately improve knowledge of the environment. The emergence of a small capacity for memory therefore does not necessarily yield a small advantage: it may result in an expenditure that lacks sufficient utility.

As resources are gradually increased, the system continues for a certain period to rely solely on the present; once a threshold is reached, the memory becomes stable enough to genuinely alter the quality of decisions, and the optimal strategy changes abruptly. The authors define this shift as a ‘phase transition’, using the language of physics to indicate a qualitative transformation brought about by exceeding a critical value. Below the threshold, the past is ignored; above the threshold, it becomes a fully integral part of the process by which the organism interprets its environment.

The reason for this discontinuity lies in the very structure of memory, which requires a mechanism capable of recording the signal and an internal state stable enough to retain it. A trace that is easily written and quickly erased disappears before it can guide behaviour; a very stable state that is poorly updated remains largely insensitive to what is happening. The advantage becomes apparent when recording and retention together achieve sufficient efficiency, allowing memory to correct errors in current perception. In the model, the intermediate solution may exist without becoming the optimal choice: a weak memory remains disadvantageous until the entire system begins to function in a coordinated manner.

This passage suggests a possible answer to a general evolutionary question. A complex function may depend on components which, when considered in isolation or present in a too rudimentary form, offer limited benefit; gradual changes may accumulate to produce a configuration whose biological value changes rapidly. The model does not reconstruct the historical emergence of memory, nor does it demonstrate that a particular species has crossed the threshold identified by the calculations; rather, it shows how a continuous variation in resources can generate a discontinuity in the most advantageous strategy. Natural selection would then have two different ways of processing information at its disposal, each advantageous in a different range of biological and environmental conditions.

Memory does not become useful in simple proportion to the uncertainty of the senses. When the signal from the environment is very precise, present-moment perception already contains almost everything that is needed, and memory adds little. If the signal is moderately uncertain, comparing successive observations allows us to distinguish a persistent variation from an occasional fluctuation, thereby improving our assessment of the situation. When uncertainty increases further and observations become unreliable, retaining them merely prolongs the noise, attributing a longer duration to data that do not allow us to reconstruct what is happening. Memory is thus particularly advantageous in the intermediate region, where information still bears a meaningful relationship to reality and immediate perception remains insufficient.

An animal following a scent trail derives little benefit from its memory when the scent clearly indicates the direction, as it need only react to the current signal. In conditions of moderate turbulence, previous perceptions make it possible to smooth out the current fluctuations and reconstruct the overall movement towards the source. If the wind disperses the scent in an almost random manner, a longer memory records a more extensive sequence of events lacking any usable order. The amount of past information available increases, whilst its ability to guide the animal remains minimal.

The value of memory also depends on the speed at which the environment changes. Previous information is only helpful as long as it remains relevant to the present situation; in a highly unstable world, memories become outdated rapidly and may cause the organism to respond to conditions that no longer exist. The model replicates the shift towards a memory-free strategy as environmental volatility increases, consistent in qualitative terms with experiments in which people reduce the weight they attribute to previous observations when the context becomes more changeable.

An animal that has repeatedly found prey in the same place may focus its subsequent searches there, saving time and energy; after the prey has migrated, the same memory continues to point to a location that has become unproductive. The trace retains its content intact but loses its value, because the link between past and present has been severed. Forgetting thus reduces the influence of old information and allows new signals to modify behaviour more rapidly.

This results in a very different conception of memory from that of a repository in which the benefit increases in line with the quantity of data accumulated. Tottori and Kobayashi’s model does not compare archives of different capacities, as it examines the advantages of using or ignoring an internal state that preserves the past; the general implication concerns the predictive quality of the content. A memory is valuable when its contents enable us to better assess the present or anticipate what is about to happen. A larger collection of signals that are degraded, random or relate to conditions that no longer exist merely increases the volume of stored material without improving our understanding.

This idea links memory to the selection of information. Retaining everything would require resources and would confer permanence even on that which arises by chance; an effective system is not measured by the quantity of traces it manages to retain, but by its ability to let go of that which no longer maintains a connection with the regularities of the world. Memory thus becomes an active filter, which does not accumulate indiscriminately but decides, through its own instability, what can still serve as a guide and what, on the other hand, must be discarded.

The optimal duration of a memory is not an intrinsic property of the memory itself, but emerges from its relationship with the persistence of the phenomena that generated it: a few seconds may be sufficient for a bacterium comparing successive concentrations, whilst more complex behaviours require greater persistence when the environment retains its characteristics for longer periods. It is in this gap between what remains and what changes that the value of memory is defined; this value does not lie in its duration but in its ability to remain synchronised with the world it seeks to describe.

Homeopathy was not part of the standard benefits guaranteed to all German insured persons. Its inclusion in the public system depended primarily on the discretion granted to individual health insurance funds to offer additional reimbursements. Some funds reimbursed products purchased from pharmacies, whilst others covered consultations and the extensive homeopathic case history, during which the doctor gathers information on the patient’s symptoms, habits and personal characteristics in order to identify the remedy deemed most appropriate. There were also specific contracts through which health insurance funds organised care pathways including homeopathic services. The reform closes these channels. Homeopathic and anthroposophic medicines are excluded from the entitlement to pharmaceutical provision covered by compulsory insurance. From 1 January 2027, health insurance funds will not be able to include them even among their supplementary benefits, nor will they be able to fund related professional activities through special contracts. The exclusion therefore applies to both products and treatments, including the doctor’s time billed as homeopathic care.

The reasoning set out in the preparatory documents for the reform is explicit. According to international standards of evidence-based medicine, there is no reliable scientific evidence of homeopathy’s efficacy beyond the placebo effect. The same assessment applies to anthroposophic treatments. In the absence of a proven clinical benefit, their funding is not considered compatible with the health insurance funds’ obligation to use resources for interventions of medical benefit. Government estimates put the annual cost of homeopathy to the health insurance system at around 40 million euros, including medicines and related professional services. The figure remains uncertain because payments were spread across various schemes and were not always recorded in a separate category. In the overall German healthcare budget, this is, however, a limited sum; nevertheless, it is precisely the relative modesty of the savings that highlights the significance of this decision. Homeopathy is not being excluded from public funding because it alone could jeopardise the German healthcare system’s finances. It is being excluded because even a modest expenditure becomes unjustifiable when it is used to pay for a treatment that has failed to provide the evidence required of any other therapy. The economic cost is also accompanied by an institutional effect: reimbursement by a health insurance fund confers a legitimacy on the product that the results of clinical trials do not recognise.

For many patients, the availability of reimbursement could be interpreted as confirmation of efficacy. If a treatment is covered by health insurance, it is natural to assume that it has undergone an assessment comparable to that required for other treatments. In the case of homeopathy, this assumption was incorrect. Health insurance funds often offered it for commercial reasons, as covering homeopathic remedies could make an insurance policy more attractive to a section of the population. The reform prevents competition between health insurance funds from turning the popularity of a therapeutic belief into a criterion for allocating healthcare resources. As is obvious, despite the figure of 10 million consumers constantly bandied about across Italy by supporters of homeopathy, a treatment may be sought by many citizens without this necessarily conferring clinical efficacy. Consumer consensus measures the prevalence of a practice, whilst therapeutic evidence requires studies capable of distinguishing the specific effect of the treatment from the natural course of the disease, fluctuations in symptoms and the patient’s expectations.

As is well known, homeopathy is based on the idea that substances capable of causing symptoms in a healthy person can cure them if diluted repeatedly, often to the point where they no longer contain any active molecules. The available evidence shows no effects beyond the placebo effect. Anthroposophic medicine, developed in the 20th century by Rudolf Steiner and Ita Wegman, integrates homeopathy with medical practices and spiritual concepts. In both cases, the German reform applies the same principle: public funding requires verifiable evidence of efficacy, not the traditional recognition of a discipline. In fact, Germany had long had regulations granting homeopathy and anthroposophy a special status. The definition of ‘special therapeutic approaches’ had made it possible to preserve a regulatory space in which homeopathy and anthroposophy continued to be regarded as legitimate healthcare practices even without fully meeting the standards applied to other treatments. The new legislation reduces this protection at the crucial point of public reimbursement.

In recent years, many regional medical associations in Germany have also removed homeopathy from their lists of recognised additional qualifications. The current decision is therefore part of a process in which professional bodies and the legislature are realigning the recognition of homeopathy with the quality of the available evidence. Its German origins and its long-standing presence in the national healthcare culture are not considered sufficient grounds for continuing to fund it. The German case also illustrates the difference between marketing authorisation and the right to reimbursement. A product may be legally registered as a medicinal product and remain available in pharmacies without this implying recognition of proven therapeutic efficacy. Marketing authorisation sets out the conditions under which the product may be marketed; reimbursement commits public resources and requires further justification, based on the benefit to the patient.

This distinction is often obscured in the Italian debate. The presence of homeopathic medicines in pharmacies and their regulation under pharmaceutical legislation are presented as if they constituted proof of their efficacy. Legal recognition of this category merely indicates that these products are subject to specific rules governing their manufacture, registration and sale. It does not prove that they cure the conditions for which they are purchased. In Italy, homeopathic medicines are not normally reimbursed by the National Health Service, but their purchase qualifies for the tax deduction provided for healthcare expenditure. Taxpayers may deduct 19 per cent of the expenditure from their tax bill, in accordance with the rules applicable to medicines. A portion of the cost is therefore passed on to the general tax system through a reduction in state revenue. The method differs from the German reimbursement system, whilst the economic principle remains similar: public money is used to facilitate the purchase of products with no proven specific efficacy.

The German approach makes the Italian anomaly all the more evident. In Hahnemann’s homeland, it has been recognised that using public funds to finance a treatment unable to demonstrate efficacy beyond that of a placebo constitutes an unacceptable waste of resources. Italy, however, continues to grant tax relief for such treatments and is debating proposals aimed at strengthening their institutional recognition. The difference between the two approaches lies in the criteria by which a democracy decides which health-related claims deserve to be supported by the community.

Having made this preliminary point, the assessment changes: in reality, the rejection appears resounding, once one looks beyond the standard formalities. The subsequent observations, in fact, address some of the most significant provisions of the reform and largely coincide with the criticisms put forward by ISPRA and the specialists heard by the Chamber of Deputies. The Conference highlights risks of breaches of European law, increased hunting pressure, a weakening of monitoring, insufficient scientific basis, dangers to non-target species and a loss of administrative capacity in data collection. Draft Law 1552, approved by the Senate on 23 June and now under consideration by the Chamber of Deputies as Bill C. 2984, is in fact facing very severe criticism regarding the measures chosen to implement it.

The main point concerns the removal of the national restriction on the first ten days of February. The Conference states:

"The removal of the deadline set for the first ten days of February for the close of the hunting season could constitute a direct breach of Article 7 of the Birds Directive, as removing the 10 February deadline would mean hunting birds during their pre-breeding migration, thereby undermining the conservation of the species."

This criticism strikes at the very heart of the argument that removing the 10 February deadline would simply restore the regions’ freedom to adapt hunting calendars to local conditions. The hunting calendar cannot be determined solely by an administrative or political decision – and certainly not at a local level – because it must take account of measurable biological events: the breeding season and the return of migratory birds to their nesting areas. Article 7 of the Birds Directive requires Member States to ensure that migratory species are not hunted during pre-breeding migration. To this end, the European Commission uses the ‘Key Concepts Document’, which compiles the best available information on the start of migration and the breeding periods of individual species; the Court of Justice has also clarified that full protection must be guaranteed during these phases.

The date of 10 February is therefore not some sort of regulatory superstition. Rather, it is a uniform deadline that reduces the risk of overlap between hunting activities and the return migration. Its removal eliminates a national safeguard and shifts the burden onto individual regions to determine, on a species-by-species basis, whether an extension is compatible with the Directive. The risk increases because the draft bill allows the first ten days of February to be exceeded and, at the same time, diminishes the weight of ISPRA’s opinion, with which local authorities would no longer be obliged to comply.

On this point, the correspondence with the scientific assessment is almost verbatim. At the hearing on 14 July in the Chamber of Deputies, ISPRA pointed out that the amendments allow the Regions to extend the hunting season for migratory species beyond the first ten days of February and transform its opinion from binding to merely advisory. According to the Institute, the combination of these two provisions risks causing conflicts with the European Commission, precisely because the Directive prohibits hunting during pre-breeding migration and the breeding season. This same contested claim – raised by the Regions themselves – involves transforming administrative flexibility into the power to extend the hunting season, whilst the technical judgement of the competent national body loses its weight.

A second point of agreement concerns the reopening of facilities for capturing birds intended for use as live decoys. The Conference points out that bird-trapping and the capture of birds have been suspended for around twenty years, following a European infringement procedure, and warns that their reopening would once again expose the State to EU proceedings. ISPRA has made the same point: the capture of wild birds for use as live decoys has been deemed incompatible with the Birds Directive and has already led to Italy being found in breach by the Court of Justice. This is therefore not a matter of the harmless revival of a local tradition, as suggested by part of the communication in favour of the reform, but of reactivating a practice for which the existing European legal precedent is already unfavourable.
With regard to fixed hunting posts, too, the Conference rejects liberalisation without a territorial assessment. The draft bill removes the limit linked to the number of authorisations issued in the 1989–1990 season and transfers the regulation of hunting hides to the regions. Regional authorities are calling for the maximum number to be determined through wildlife and hunting planning, taking into account hunter density and the protection of migratory routes. ISPRA notes, in the same vein, that removing the limit may increase pressure on migratory birds. The distinction is important: assigning responsibility to the regions may be consistent with their role, but this responsibility must be exercised on the basis of a planned limit, not result in the absence of any limit at all. The official text of the draft bill, in fact, entrusts the regions with the authorisation of hunting posts without retaining the previous national cap.

The Conference also objects to the removal of the requirement to choose a single form of hunting. According to the document, the possibility of practising multiple forms of hunting may increase hunting pressure and make monitoring more difficult. ISPRA takes a less restrictive stance on this point, deeming the change acceptable in light of the decline in the number of hunters, but acknowledges that it may increase the pressure associated with certain specific hunting methods. Here too, the limitation of the argument that the overall reduction in the number of hunters would justify any expansion of their individual options becomes apparent. Pressure on wildlife depends not only on the total number of licences, but also on the distribution of hunters, the hunting methods used, the length of the season and the capacity for monitoring.

Another set of comments concerns land-use planning. The draft bill generally opens up areas belonging to the state, regional and public-sector forest estates to planned hunting. The Conference calls for hunting access to remain subject to specific ecological assessments and safety restrictions linked to other forms of land use. The fact that a forest is publicly owned provides no information whatsoever on its capacity to withstand increased pressure, on the presence of sensitive species, or on its compatibility with hiking, forestry work and recreational activities. Management that claims to be scientific should be based on the characteristics of the sites themselves, whereas a blanket opening up of the land reverses the order of assessment: first the land is made available, then any reasons for restricting its use are sought.

In the same vein, the Regions criticise the exclusion of the Provinces from certain functions, as this reduces local adaptability and undermines data collection. They also contest the power of substitution jointly entrusted to the Ministries of Agriculture and the Environment when regional administrations fail to submit the requested information within three months, deeming it disproportionate in relation to obligations that require data collection and processing. They propose prior consultation and reasonable timeframes. This objection concerns the knowledge infrastructure underpinning the reform: whilst the draft bill advocates a more modern approach to management, it risks diminishing the role of local authorities responsible for collecting the information necessary for that management.

The Conference also notes that replacing the clear threshold of 40 per cent of the land concerned with the phrase ‘the majority of the territory’ introduces legal uncertainty and makes it more difficult for landowners and local communities to oppose restrictions. This point, too, undermines the idea of a reform limited to wildlife management efficiency. The expansion of hunting activities affects land use, safety and landowners’ ability to participate in decisions concerning their own land; making it more difficult to object does not improve the scientific quality of management.

Of particular significance is the objection to the fixed distance of five hundred metres stipulated for the derogation relating to the starling. The Conference states that it can find no scientific basis for this figure and highlights the risk of further European sanctions. As with the efficacy of homeopathy and complementary therapies, a distance laid down in a law does not become rational simply because it is set out in a parliamentary text. The derogations provided for in the Birds Directive must meet specific conditions, be selective and justified by the need to prevent actual harm. The radius within which culling is authorised should therefore be derived from data on the type of crop, the distribution of the birds and the effectiveness of the measure. In the absence of such evidence, the 500-metre threshold constitutes a legislative limit lacking the necessary link to the phenomenon it is intended to regulate.

The most contentious point, after the one concerning the calendar, relates to wild boar hunting on snow-covered ground. The Conference expresses ‘concern’ about the possibility of authorising driven hunts and identifies ‘a serious threat to the survival of small resident wildlife’. It adds that the snow eliminates any chance of the animals escaping and can turn the activity into indiscriminate and non-selective culling, affecting even young and pregnant females. ISPRA – and indeed anyone with even a basic understanding of the ecology of the species affected by hunting – had already highlighted the possible indirect effects on non-target species.

This point directly challenges the claim that any expansion of wild boar hunting should be presented as a management measure: the fact that a species needs to be controlled does not, in fact, render the method employed and its effects on the rest of the animal community irrelevant. A driven hunt involves the movement of people and dogs, disturbance and pursuit in an environment where snow makes escape more difficult and the animals easier to spot. Selectivity – which should distinguish wildlife management from a mere increase in shooting opportunities – thus becomes the central issue. The regions responsible for authorising and organising these activities state that the provision may have consequences incompatible with the principles invoked by the reform itself.

The similarity between the text from the Regions and that from ISPRA is particularly instructive. The Institute also stated that hunting that is properly planned and based on scientific criteria can be compatible with conservation, and deemed it reasonable to update a law drafted in the early 1990s. However, it concluded that several amendments to the draft bill are not consistent with the objectives of biodiversity conservation: they do not reduce the take on species in an unfavourable conservation status, they increase certain pressure factors, they expose Italy to conflicts with European regulations, and they weaken the role of the national technical body.

The Regions’ position follows the same structure: agreement on the need for reform, disagreement on key parts of the proposed reform. For this reason, the document cannot be used as an endorsement accompanied by a few requests for administrative adjustments. The timetable beyond 10 February, the trapping of decoyed birds, hunting from hides without a planned limit, the proliferation of hunting methods, the opening up of state-owned forest land, the derogation concerning starlings and driven hunts on snow form the core structure of the measure.

The institutional significance of this assessment is clear. It is the Regions that draw up hunting calendars, plan land use, authorise activities, collect data, organise inspections and deal with disputes. When these very bodies perceive that a regulation may breach the Birds Directive, increase pressure on migratory species, hinder monitoring or result in non-selective culling, Parliament does not receive an external protest, but rather the assessment of the administrations responsible for implementing the law.

Following the views of ISPRA and the experts heard in the Chamber of Deputies, the Conference of Regions has therefore confirmed that the main objections to the draft bill do not stem from an ideological opposition to hunting. They concern the regulations’ compliance with EU law, their scientific basis and the possibility of implementing them without compromising wildlife conservation. The reform is being challenged at its very core by the technical and institutional bodies on which it is supposed to rely in order to function.

The political significance of the affair was grasped with remarkable clarity even by Caccia Magazine, a publication entirely dedicated to the world of hunting. The article of 27 July begins by noting that, apart from environmentalists, the opposition parties, Forza Italia, Arcicaccia (!) and ISPRA, the only groups still supporting the bill passed by the Senate are Fratelli d’Italia, the Lega and a section of the hunting associations. The magazine’s conclusion is unsparing: “this front, which is dwindling week by week, cannot count on the support of the regions and autonomous provinces.”

This is not the view of an animal rights organisation. It is the opening piece chosen by the editorial team of a hunting magazine. When even the hunting press reports on the bill’s isolation and acknowledges that the regions are refusing to back it, the propaganda about a modern, scientific and widely supported reform no longer holds water, and the text appears for what it is: a mere slapdash ploy to scrape together a few more votes ahead of the general election.

Let us therefore examine the text of these draft bills in detail.

A.C. 1456 defines shiatsu as an ‘evolutionary technique’ intended to preserve health and activate the ‘ability to rebalance vital functions’ through pressure applied to areas, lines and points on the body. This is the traditional framework of Eastern ‘energy medicine’, stripped of the terms that would make its nature immediately recognisable. There is no mention of Ki, meridians or the flow of vital energy, but the underlying framework remains: the body is said to possess an overall balance; this balance may be disrupted; and pressure on specific points is said to be capable of restoring it. The ‘vital functions’ referred to in the text are not those defined by physiology and medicine, but a general and indistinct condition of the organism – that of vitalism, which always resurfaces in our bias-laden minds. Imbalance is not identified through measurable parameters, and rebalancing does not correspond to any defined clinical outcome. Vital energy disappears from the surface of the norm and returns under the seemingly neutral name of ‘ability to restore balance’. Article 3 of the same draft bill states in black and white that the pressure applied by the practitioner ‘restores all the body’s natural functions’ and stimulates the ‘body’s self-healing abilities’. There is no mention of relaxation or a possible subjective sense of well-being. It is stated that a manual practice restores all the body’s natural functions, without specifying a disease, a biological mechanism or a clinical outcome.

Self-healing is treated as a unified force within the body that shiatsu is said to be able to activate. Different processes, such as tissue repair, the immune response, functional recovery and the spontaneous resolution of symptoms, are grouped together under a general vitalistic principle. The practitioner is also credited with the ability to foster awareness of a person’s ‘bodily, relational and conflictual dynamics’, extending manual treatment to an undefined psychological dimension. Another draft bill, corresponding to A.C. 2742, uses more measured language but retains the same model. This text, too, asserts that shiatsu activates the ‘ability to rebalance vital functions’ through pressure on specific areas and points – here, too, therefore, vitalism and balancing-act nonsense are set out in black and white. Here too, the text reproduces the framework of a general balance of vital functions, which can be altered and restored by acting on specific points on the body. It is the very same structure that shiatsu organisations explicitly describe through Ki, the meridians and the circulation of vital energy, although these terms have been omitted from the legislative text.

The proposal put forward by Zanella adds that shiatsu produces ‘proven beneficial effects’. It does not specify what effects, for which conditions, in comparison to what, and, above all, on the basis of what evidence. The word ‘proven’ is inserted into the text as a legislative certification of efficacy. The evidence is not derived from clinical trials, systematic reviews or assessments by scientific bodies: it is produced by the legislation itself. These formulations do not appear merely in the explanatory reports, where they might be regarded as propaganda on the part of the proposers. They are written into the articles defining shiatsu. Should either of the two bills be passed, the State would formally recognise the existence of a balance of vital functions, the possibility of altering it through pressure on specific points on the body, a general capacity for self-healing, and the benefits of the discipline declared to be “proven”. Professionalisation is merely the vehicle: the substantive aim is to transform a vitalistic doctrine into regulatory content, enabling it to be taught, certified and presented to the public as part of a profession recognised by the Republic. A comparison with the doctrine set out by shiatsu organisations reveals the lexical translation carried out in the text: ‘Ki’ corresponds to the vital capacity for rebalancing; ‘meridians’ to the specific lines and points; and the restoration of energy flow to the rebalancing of vital functions.

The precedent of mototherapy, which has been designated by law as a ‘complementary therapy’, shows that the risk is not merely theoretical: a parliamentary majority can, by law, confer therapeutic status even in the absence of a robust, controlled and independently replicated clinical basis to justify it.

This is the crux of the matter: as with homeopathy and draft legislation on complementary medicines, the aim is to use the law to bypass science and introduce alternative models of reality into healthcare and educational institutions – models that lack empirical support and run counter to evidence-based medicine. Since the available data do not demonstrate the existence of the proclaimed general effects of rebalancing vital functions, activating self-healing or restoring all natural functions (whatever these constructs may mean), recourse is made to the law to declare them to be true. Legislation takes the place of evidence, because Parliament does not merely regulate a profession, but declares its underlying assumptions to be true. This becomes possible in a system that no longer monitors the correspondence between the claims enshrined in laws and the facts that can be ascertained. Ultimately, science is treated as just one of many possible opinions, and the scientific community as any other social body, a bearer of interests and nothing more: thus, in the Italian Parliament, facts disappear and evidence becomes blurred in an indistinct glimmer of interests to be reconciled.

Homeopathy has been the subject of repeated scientific evaluation. In 2017, the European Academies’ Science Advisory Council, which brings together the national scientific academies of the European Union member states, reviewed the main available systematic reviews and concluded that there is no condition for which robust and reproducible efficacy superior to placebo has been demonstrated. The same body noted that the mechanisms proposed by homeopathy are incompatible with established knowledge regarding the relationship between dose and pharmacological effect. Many homeopathic products are diluted to such an extent that they no longer contain any molecules of the original substance, whilst the alleged ‘memory of water’ has not been confirmed by experiments consistent with the claimed clinical effect. On this basis, the European academies have recommended that public health systems should not reimburse homeopathic products and services in the absence of rigorous evidence of efficacy. European legislation on homeopathic medicinal products does not alter this conclusion. Article 14 of Directive 2001/83/EC allows for simplified registration of sufficiently diluted products intended for oral or external administration and without therapeutic indications. This procedure expressly exempts the product from the requirement to demonstrate efficacy. The product may therefore be registered as a ‘homeopathic medicinal product’ because it meets certain manufacturing and safety requirements, without it having been demonstrated that it cures a specific disease. The same distinction is set out in Legislative Decree 219 of 2006, by which Italy transposed the European legislation. AIFA assesses the pharmaceutical quality of the product and the aspects necessary for its registration, but the simplified procedure does not certify therapeutic efficacy and requires the absence of approved indications. The term ‘medicinal product’ therefore refers to a legal and manufacturing category; it does not constitute proof of clinical efficacy.

The request put forward by homeopathic companies concerns precisely this restriction. On 28 April 2026, Omeoimprese, an association representing Italian manufacturers and distributors of homeopathic and anthroposophic medicines, was heard by the 10th Senate Committee during the examination of Bill S.1786. Chairwoman Silvia Nencioni called for the reform to fully recognise the specific nature of these products and to allow for communication relating to the individual medicinal product, its dosage and its scope of use. She also criticised the interpretation adopted by AIFA, which she deemed too restrictive as it prevents therapeutic indications not supported by a standard authorisation based on clinical evidence from being associated with the products. A few months later, on 14 July 2026, the Senate hosted the conference ‘La medicina omeopatica in Europa e in Italia. Quadro normativo, orientamenti e prospettive di riforma’, organised by Senator Giovanni Satta of Fratelli d’Italia. Satta is also the rapporteur for S.1251. The meeting was attended by Undersecretary Gemmato, who argued for the need to bring Italian regulations into line with those of other European countries and to provide more comprehensive information on homeopathic medicines, starting with the patient information leaflet. He explained the Government’s interest by pointing to the more than ten million citizens who report having used these products in the last year and noted the existence of a consultation forum at the Ministry of Health. The number of consumers reflects the commercial prevalence of the product, not its therapeutic effect. Widespread use may necessitate careful monitoring of production and the accuracy of information, but it cannot prove that patients improve as a result of the treatment. Efficacy requires a comparison between groups of patients and the measurement of pre-defined clinical outcomes. Popularity does not provide this data.

The request to expand the package leaflet must therefore be assessed on the basis of its content. The addition of information on composition, dilution ratio or precautions may improve transparency. The inclusion of treatable conditions, therapeutic dosages or clinical benefits, on the other hand, would attribute to the product a level of efficacy that should be demonstrated through appropriate studies. In this second case, the package leaflet would become the means by which a public authority confers clinical value on data that has not met the standard evaluation criteria. The impetus from the Government is evidenced by the public stance taken by Gemmato, whilst the legislative initiatives tabled so far have originated in Parliament. The documents do not reveal a formally uniform line across the entire Executive, as the Government has expressed opposition to one of the amendments to S.1786. The fact remains that an Under-Secretary of State for Health took part, in an institutional setting, in a meeting dedicated to the reform of homeopathy and presented the sector’s requests as an issue warranting regulatory intervention. The first explicit attempt to amend the legislation took place during the examination of S.1786, a bill through which the Government is asking Parliament for delegated powers to reorganise pharmaceutical regulations. Following the hearing with Omeoimprese, three political groups tabled almost identical amendments to ensure that the delegated powers would also cover “homeopathic and anthroposophic medicines governed by current legislation”.

Amendment 3.14 was tabled by Daniela Ternullo and Francesco Silvestro of Forza Italia. Amendment 3.15 was tabled by Orfeo Mazzella, Barbara Guidolin and Mariolina Castellone of the Five Star Movement. Amendment 3.16 was tabled by Elena Murelli, Tilde Minasi and Maria Cristina Cantù of the Lega. The same request therefore appeared in part of the majority and in a section of the opposition. A fourth amendment, 3.150, had been tabled by Mazzella, Guidolin and Castellone. The text called for the reform to ensure the “accuracy of information and the sustainability of the entire homeopathic medicines sector”. The wording combined patient protection with the economic protection of the sector, introducing into the criteria of pharmaceutical legislation the sustainability of a sector whose products have not demonstrated greater efficacy than a placebo. The amendment was rejected, with the rapporteur and the Government voting against it. Amendments 3.14, 3.15 and 3.16 received a negative opinion from the Budget Committee pursuant to Article 81 of the Constitution. In the minutes of 8 July 2026, the rapporteur pointed out that homeopathic medicines are not included in the essential levels of care (LEA), that is, the services that the National Health Service is required to provide through public funding. He therefore observed that the amendments appeared to pave the way for the subsequent inclusion of these products in the LEA, with potential costs for the State.

The dissenting opinion concerned financial coverage and not a lack of efficacy. The reports do not contain a scientific assessment of homeopathy, nor do they assert the principle that a product lacking evidence should not be granted therapeutic indications or public funding. Bill S.1786-A, finalised by the Committee on 14 July 2026, contains no references to homeopathy or anthroposophic medicines. The attempt therefore did not result in legislation, but it did demonstrate that there are senators from Forza Italia, the League and the Five Star Movement willing to include these products in the pharmaceutical reform. Bill S.1251 has a much broader scope. It was tabled on 1 October 2024 by Senator Mazzella of the Five Star Movement and is currently being examined by the 10th Committee in its drafting phase, a procedure in which the Committee carries out the main work on the articles prior to the final vote in the Senate. The rapporteur is Giovanni Satta of Fratelli d’Italia. As of 24 July 2026, only the original text is available and a list of amendments has not yet been published. The text does not expressly mention homeopathy, but its inclusion is certain. The Senate’s official TESEO classification associates Articles 1 and 4 of the bill with the subject of ‘alternative and homeopathic medicine’. During the preliminary examination, the Italian Society of Homeopathy and Integrated Medicine was heard and submitted a written submission on the bill. The State-Regions Agreement of 7 February 2013, used as a reference for training in complementary medicine, also includes homeopathy and treats homotoxicology and anthroposophy as equivalent to it.

Article 1 defines complementary and integrative therapies as those aimed at alleviating physical or psychological suffering, contributing to rehabilitation and enhancing well-being. The definition takes into account what a practice claims to achieve, rather than what it has been shown to achieve. A discipline may therefore fall within this category simply because it claims to have a therapeutic purpose, even where studies have not confirmed any specific clinical effect. Having defined the category on the basis of its stated aims, the article stipulates that the Republic ‘recognises the therapeutic value of complementary and integrative therapies’. This is the decisive provision. Parliament attributes ‘therapeutic value’ by law, whilst therapeutic efficacy should be demonstrated separately for each treatment and for each clinical indication. In the case of homeopathy, legislative recognition would come after leading scientific assessments have ruled out the existence of robust evidence of efficacy superior to that of a placebo. The explanatory memorandum to S.1251 maintains that the bill concerns therapies with documented safety and efficacy that have been approved by international scientific societies. The text of the bill, which constitutes the part intended to become law, does not contain these conditions. No article specifies what level of evidence must be met, what studies must be submitted, or which public body should verify them. No assessment by the Higher Institute of Public Health is required, nor is the mandatory involvement of AIFA or AGENAS provided for. There is also no reference to the procedures of the National Guidelines System. Nor is efficacy linked to any specific indications. A treatment may be beneficial for one condition and ineffective for another, which is why conventional medicines are authorised for specific diseases, dosages and patient populations. Bill S.1251, on the other hand, attributes therapeutic value to the entire category of complementary therapies, without specifying which conditions may be treated or which outcomes should be measured.

Article 1 itself stipulates that these therapies form part of the services provided by the National Health Service and may be administered in hospitals, rehabilitation centres, care homes, educational institutions, prisons and addiction treatment centres. The text does not define the eligible clinical conditions, does not explicitly prohibit the substitution of effective treatments, and does not provide for specific safeguards for vulnerable individuals housed in such facilities. The article does not immediately establish a new Essential Level of Care (LEA) nor does it set a national tariff. Its approval would, however, provide a legislative basis for introducing programmes and services through subsequent ministerial or regional decrees. The formulation stating that these therapies ‘fall within’ the scope of NHS services would also have a strong legitimising effect, as healthcare facilities and professionals could cite a state law that has recognised their therapeutic value. The reference to citizens’ freedom of choice and doctors’ freedom to treat does not resolve the issue. Individual freedom allows a person to purchase a legal product, provided they receive accurate information. Provision by the NHS, on the other hand, requires the State to assess whether that service produces sufficient benefit to justify the use of public resources. Transforming an individual preference into a healthcare service means granting it recognition that must be based on evidence. Article 2 establishes a Permanent Commission for Complementary and Integrative Therapies within the Ministry of Health. Its tasks include raising awareness of these practices, promoting research – including with a view to recognising new disciplines – and assessing qualifications obtained abroad. The Commission should also draw up a code of ethics for experts.

The draft bill does not specify the number of members of the Commission nor does it indicate what scientific expertise they must possess. There are no provisions regarding conflicts of interest, nor is mandatory representation reserved for the public bodies responsible for the assessment of health technologies. The Ministers for Health and Universities would appoint the members, whilst the Commission itself would adopt its own rules of procedure. This structure assigns to the same body the task of promoting therapies and that of overseeing their application. Research is also geared towards the possible recognition of new disciplines, whilst the text does not define a procedure for excluding those found to be ineffective. The composition of the Commission therefore becomes decisive, because a potential predominance of representatives from the disciplines concerned could influence the criteria used to recognise them. Articles 4 and 5 establish the professional role of ‘expert in complementary and integrative therapies’ and provide for registers to be maintained by professional bodies. Registration would allow the title to be used publicly. For members of the public, inclusion in a register maintained by a health professional body normally represents a guarantee of professional competence. In the proposed system, this guarantee would relate to the practitioner’s training, whilst there would be no equivalent verification of the effectiveness of the practice carried out.

Article 6 introduces recognition within the university system. Universities could establish first- and second-level master’s programmes leading to the qualification of ‘expert’, whilst a decree issued by the Ministries of Universities and Health would be required to set out the programmes and subjects. The text also provides for the possibility of authorising private training institutions to award the qualification. A university may legitimately study homeopathy as a historical, social or economic phenomenon. The master’s programmes provided for in S.1251 would serve a professional purpose, as the qualification obtained would be required for registration in professional registers and for practising within healthcare facilities. The university would therefore participate in the training of practitioners to whom the State has recognised the right to practise a discipline considered therapeutic. The minimum requirements are lower than those already established by the 2013 State-Regions Agreement. S.1251 stipulates a duration of no less than one year, comprising at least one hundred hours of theory and fifty hours of clinical practice per year. The current agreement requires, for acupuncture, phytotherapy and homeopathy, at least 400 hours of theory and 100 hours of clinical practice, in addition to independent study and supervised training. It also stipulates a minimum attendance rate of 80 per cent and, for courses delivered by accredited providers, a duration of normally three years.

The project could therefore broaden professional recognition by reducing the minimum training required. This issue is distinct from that of effectiveness: a longer course may improve knowledge of the discipline, but does not make the treatment effective. Reducing the requirements would, however, increase the number of individuals able to present themselves as recognised experts. Article 7 stipulates that the law must be implemented without imposing new or increased burdens on public finances. This clause is difficult to reconcile with the establishment of a standing committee, the promotion of research and the provision of services within the National Health Service (SSN). In the absence of new funding, these activities would have to utilise existing resources, thereby competing with healthcare interventions that have undergone efficacy assessments. The contradiction with the opinion expressed on the amendments to S.1786 is evident. The Budget Committee considered that the mere reference to homeopathic medicines in the pharmaceutical delegation bill could pave the way for their future inclusion in the Essential Levels of Care (LEA). Bill S.1251 explicitly states that complementary therapies form part of the National Health Service’s benefits, whilst declaring that this must not result in additional costs. When the bill is examined by the Budget Committee, it will need to be clarified how this provision can be implemented without affecting healthcare expenditure.

The articles as a whole provide a comprehensive overview. Article 1 attributes therapeutic value and grants access to National Health Service facilities. The subsequent articles establish the role of the expert and the relevant registers, whilst Article 6 provides for university courses and qualifications that may also be awarded by authorised private institutions. Article 2 entrusts a ministerial commission with the task of overseeing the implementation of the system and promoting the recognition of new disciplines. For homeopathy, this framework would make it possible to achieve through a political decision what research has failed to demonstrate. The product would continue to lack robust evidence of efficacy superior to that of a placebo, but the practice could be defined as therapeutic by law, practised by professionals registered in public registers and taught on master’s programmes leading to a recognised qualification. Its potential inclusion within the National Health Service (SSN) would further reinforce the perception that the State has verified its efficacy. The amendments to S.1786 have been put on hold for the time being. Amendment 3.150 was rejected, whilst the Budget Committee’s negative opinion prevented amendments 3.14, 3.15 and 3.16 from being included in the final text. S.1251, on the other hand, remains under consideration and has a broader scope, as it concerns not only the provision of information on homeopathic medicines but also the recognition of practices, professionals and training programmes. Political support for it spans both the majority and the opposition. Satta, a member of Fratelli d’Italia and rapporteur for S.1251, organised the institutional meeting on homeopathy attended by Gemmato. Forza Italia and the Lega have tabled amendments in favour of homeopathic medicines in S.1786, whilst the Five Star Movement has tabled the same amendments and is the author of S.1251. There is not yet a parliamentary majority formally committed to approving the bill, but there is documented convergence among members of different groups.

The issue concerns the criteria by which a practice is incorporated into the public healthcare system. EBM requires that therapeutic efficacy be demonstrated prior to recognition and for a specific clinical indication. Bill S.1251, however, attributes ‘therapeutic value’ by law to a category defined by its stated aims. Scientific evidence thus ceases to be a prerequisite for access to the National Health Service and the university system, whilst political recognition becomes the starting point. The approval of this bill would make it possible to present a practice that has not been shown to produce the promised effect as a recognised therapy. The issue does not concern citizens’ freedom to purchase homeopathic products – which remains guaranteed under current legislation – but rather the use of state authority to confer clinical credibility on those products and the associated practices. Therapeutic efficacy must continue to depend on research findings, because no parliamentary provision can transform the absence of evidence into proof of efficacy.

On 15 July, representatives of the European Union’s governments agreed on the position the Council will take in negotiations on the EU budget for 2027, reducing the allocation the Commission had proposed for Horizon Europe by €231.5 million. The programme, for which the Commission had earmarked €12.8 billion for 2027, would thus be reduced to around €12.6 billion; the cut would mainly affect the health sector, which would lose €74.5 million, whilst a further €15.9 million would be cut from the European Research Council and scientific infrastructure combined. The European Parliament will be able to amend these figures during the negotiations, which are due to be concluded by November, but the stance taken by the governments already indicates the value they place on research when setting spending priorities. The amount cut from Horizon Europe is equivalent to 1.8 per cent of the Commission’s proposed allocation and would bring the programme below the approximately 13 billion allocated in the 2026 budget, resulting in a nominal reduction that inflation would make even more severe in real terms. The decision also takes on broader significance when viewed in the context of recent negotiations, as the Council had already requested a cut of 211 million from Horizon Europe during the preparation of the 2026 budget, before the Parliament managed to overturn the outcome of the negotiations and secure an additional twenty million compared with the Commission’s initial proposal.

The same trend is evident in the comparison of the 2028–2034 multiannual budget, on which the scale of the next European Framework Programme for Research will depend. The Draghi report, having described the EU’s loss of competitiveness compared with the United States and China, had recommended increasing the programme’s seven-year funding to 200 billion; the Commission proposed 175, whilst the Cypriot Presidency of the Council put forward 167.9 billion, reducing that figure by 4 per cent as well. The individual amounts are still under negotiation, but the direction set by the governments remains consistent and shows how research, despite being continually referenced in documents on European autonomy, is regarded as one of the areas from which to recoup financial margins. This decision affects a system that already has resources far below the standard of the research submitted. According to the mid-term evaluation published by the European Commission, in the first three years of Horizon Europe, almost seven out of ten proposals judged to be of high quality received no funding, even though they had met the threshold set by the experts; a further €82 billion would have been needed to support all the projects deemed worthy. The cut proposed by the Council would further restrict a selection process that already excludes the majority of positively assessed projects, thereby also wasting the effort invested in developing them and subjecting them to a highly demanding scientific review.

The same assessment estimates that every euro invested through Horizon Europe could generate, over a period of twenty-five years, up to eleven euros of additional gross domestic product. Such a long timeframe depends on the nature of the research, as decades may elapse between the conception of an idea and its transformation into a usable technology, during which time the necessary expertise must be developed and knowledge must mature. When funding is cut off, the loss therefore concerns a capacity that will take many years to rebuild, assuming that those forced to abandon a project are still willing to resume it. The Draghi report linked this weakness to the political fragmentation of the Union. Overall, European governments allocate a share of gross domestic product to public research comparable to that of the United States, but only one-tenth of this expenditure is managed at EU level, whereas in the United States the federal component allows substantial funding to be concentrated on programmes that are large enough to compete on a global scale. Horizon Europe is the main instrument through which Europe can transcend national borders and select projects within a single scientific competition; reducing its budget therefore means weakening precisely the level at which the Union could offset the fragmentation of its resources.

The structure of the European budget helps to explain this vulnerability. Agricultural and cohesion funds allow each government to predict what share will return within its own borders, whilst a research project funded in one Member State may yield its most significant results elsewhere, even when the knowledge generated becomes usable across the entire Union. In negotiations between governments, which tend to focus on immediate national benefit, scientific funding therefore appears less lucrative, even though its supranational nature is precisely what constitutes the greatest added value of Horizon Europe. During the same period, the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the country’s leading public agency for the competitive funding of basic research, announced that in 2026 it would support 12,000 additional projects through the Category C Young Scientists Fund, increasing the number of available grants by over 50 per cent. As each project receives 300,000 yuan over a three-year period, the additional investment will amount to 3.6 billion yuan, equivalent to approximately 531 million dollars according to the estimate reported by Nature. Category C, formerly known as the Young Scientists Fund, is the programme through which the Chinese agency enables early-career researchers to lead their own projects and gain their first taste of scientific autonomy. The individual grant is modest compared with the largest European grants, but it is awarded directly to the young project leader and allows them to develop an idea without being entirely dependent on the work of a more senior scientist. Increasing this category by 12,000 places means significantly expanding the number of young people who will be allowed to take responsibility for research, thereby building the expertise from which the scientific teams of the coming years will emerge.

Competition for funding and academic posts will remain fierce, as Nature observes, because the increase in funding does not alleviate the pressures caused by the rapid expansion of the Chinese university system. However, the decision does change the number of ideas that can be explored and allows scientific risk to be spread across a much wider audience. Since no agency can predict which projects will yield a significant discovery, funding thousands of young researchers increases the likelihood of unexpected results emerging, alongside the country’s ability to recognise and develop them. The strategic significance of the measure lies in the stage of the career at which it is targeted. China is investing in the people who will be conducting research over the coming decades and is willing to fund basic research whose industrial applications may as yet be unknown, because it regards the generation of knowledge as a prerequisite for its future power. The technological autonomy pursued by Beijing therefore begins long before the factory floor and involves the formation of a scientific community large enough to continuously fuel new programmes.

The increase in funding for young researchers is part of a long-standing national trend. According to the Chinese National Bureau of Statistics, in 2024 China spent 3,613 billion yuan on research and development, reaching 2.68 per cent of gross domestic product, whilst expenditure on basic research grew by 10.5 per cent in the same year. For 2026, the budget of the National Natural Science Foundation of China also sets the allocation for the National Natural Science Fund at 41.86 billion yuan, representing a 6.09 per cent increase on the previous financial year. The funding of these 12,000 new projects is therefore part of a policy that is increasing investment and channelling a growing proportion of resources towards building future scientific capacity. A historical comparison with Europe illustrates the speed with which the balance of power has shifted. In 2014, China allocated 1.96 per cent of its gross domestic product to research and development, whilst the European Union invested 2.09 per cent; by 2024, according to the latest Eurostat data, the European share had risen to 2.24 per cent, whilst China’s had reached 2.68 per cent. Over the course of ten years, the EU’s R&D intensity has therefore grown by just 0.15 percentage points, whilst China’s has increased by 0.72, having in the meantime overtaken the European level. The 3 per cent target, set by Europe over twenty years ago and reiterated in numerous subsequent documents, remains a distant prospect.

Horizon Europe and the Chinese Young Scientists Fund fund different activities, so the absolute amounts cannot be treated as two perfectly equivalent items; however, comparing them allows us to observe how the two regions are responding to the same global scientific competition. China, which started from a less advanced position, is rapidly increasing its investment and broadening young people’s access to independent research, whilst European governments are seeking to scale back their main joint programme at precisely the moment when available assessments show that a large proportion of excellent projects remain unfunded. The European crisis stems from this contradiction between the diagnosis and the decisions taken. The EU still has universities capable of producing high-quality research and employs competitive procedures that identify far more worthy projects than it is able to fund, but its common budget remains too weak to support a strategy capable of meeting the challenges of international competition. Member States continue to defend the national allocation of resources, whilst research requires programmes large enough to transcend those borders; the result is a continent that recognises its own loss of ground and, at the very moment it should be reacting, is scaling back the very tools needed to halt it.

The Council justifies its position by citing the need to conserve resources for international crises and unforeseen events. However, any future crisis will be tackled using the knowledge and personnel trained in previous years, as the technologies required to reduce energy dependence or respond to a new epidemic cannot be acquired at the very moment they become urgent. Withdrawing resources from research today means increasing the likelihood that Europe will tomorrow have to buy solutions elsewhere that it will not have helped to develop. In a few years’ time, we may find ourselves discussing China’s technological superiority as if it were the inevitable result of the country’s size or a particular aptitude for innovation. The reasons, however, will also be evident in the decisions taken today: whilst China is offering 12,000 more young people the chance to embark on independent research, European governments are proposing to scale back a programme that already leaves the majority of projects deemed excellent without funding.

Where do you think this will lead?

We are therefore not facing a sudden financial setback. We are facing the failure – at least in the form pursued thus far – of an operation publicly presented as a relaunch that had already taken place. The most serious contradiction concerns research. Holostem was not founded as an industrial entity to which a commercial plan could be applied from the outside. It was the vehicle through which the research developed over decades by Michele De Luca, Graziella Pellegrini and their team was transformed into clinical trials and therapies. Holoclar, the gene therapy for epidermolysis bullosa, and the epithelial stem cell platforms were not interchangeable products, separable from the people who had laid their biological, clinical and technological foundations. Yet, by the end of 2025, trials for epidermolysis bullosa had been at a standstill for two years, production of Holoclar was described as virtually halted, and the researchers who had developed those therapies were no longer involved in the scientific processes.

At that point, the question was already inevitable: who was actually leading Holostem’s research?

A company may replace a managing director, reorganise its management control functions or engage new financial advisers. It is far more difficult to replace the team that conceived the projects, who understand the biology of the cells used, the history of the production processes, the experimental failures, the clinical constraints and the reasons behind individual technological choices. To remove or exclude that team and continue to speak of scientific continuity would have reduced Holostem to a ghost ship: the hull still painted with its glorious name, the laboratories lit up, the sails billowing with press releases and the course charted in the business plans, but the bridge deserted. Those who knew the sea, who had built the ship and knew where to steer it, had been left ashore; on board remained nautical charts full of promises, whilst no one was at the helm – merely someone on shore recounting tales of fantastical voyages. The issue is not whether a company should be run by scientists rather than managers. The issue is understanding what business plan could possibly be credible after separating the production structure from the scientific expertise that had generated its key products. The celebratory press release of October 2025 spoke of a complete ‘core team’, new delivery systems, six therapies to be developed and a capability ranging from research to GMP production. A few weeks later, it emerged publicly that the clinical programmes had stalled and that the developers of the therapies had been sidelined. The following July, the company was wound up. 

There is also an issue that requires accounting answers, not further announcements. Holostem had been selected for the IPCEI Med4Cure programme with a project entitled “Integrated Platform for Cellular and Gene Therapy”, aimed, according to the company, at developing six products for rare diseases. As recently as 3 July 2026, the Emilia-Romagna Region noted that Holostem was one of five Italian companies receiving European research funding. It is therefore necessary to disclose, on a project-by-project basis, the amount of resources allocated or earmarked, the sums actually received, the costs incurred, the experimental activities carried out, the milestones achieved, and what will now become of the funding, equipment, data and intellectual property. If the financial statements show grants, receivables or revenue linked to research projects, it must be explained what work these correspond to and who actually carried out those activities, whilst the main experiments were at a standstill and the original researchers had been excluded.

It is incorrect to claim, without accounting documents, that the money has disappeared. It is, however, entirely legitimate to ask where it was spent, with what verifiable results and under whose responsibility. All the more so because Holostem is owned by a public foundation, overseen by the Ministry of Enterprise and the Ministry of Health, and because the Government itself admits that the relaunch has failed despite the public funds already invested. The Ministry now promises that the ‘Holostem project’ will continue within a broader national platform for regenerative medicine. This is a formula that bears too close a resemblance to those already used to announce the company’s revival. Before presenting another plan, data on the previous one is required: money invested, activities carried out, therapies actually produced, trials initiated, relationships with researchers, European obligations and the reasons for the latest liquidation. Holostem’s science is not the same as its brand, its pharmaceutical operations or its corporate presentations. It consisted of knowledge, people and specific experimental programmes. Those who claimed to have saved the company by ousting or marginalising those who had generated that science must now explain what they thought they had saved.

Buonguerrieri refers to doctors and nurses who are said to have lost their jobs for refusing vaccination, whilst the legislation she has tabled concerns professionals struck off the register following disciplinary proceedings. The difference is fundamental and decisive. Failure to comply with the vaccination requirement resulted in a temporary suspension from carrying out high-risk activities and, where it was not possible to assign the employee to other duties, from pay; striking off the register, on the other hand, constitutes the most serious disciplinary sanction, imposed by the Professional Body following an assessment of individual conduct deemed incompatible with continued practice of the profession. The Constitutional Court expressly noted that the consequence provided for by law was suspension, not the termination of the employment relationship. The amendment therefore does not overturn the suspensions of unvaccinated healthcare workers, does not restore their lost wages, and does not declare the obligation unlawful. It introduces a special procedure through which certain healthcare professionals struck off for ‘non-malicious acts related to the pandemic’ may apply for reinstatement within sixty days of the law coming into force, provided they still have an appeal pending before the Central Commission for Healthcare Professionals. The audience Buonguerrieri addresses in his statement and the group covered by the legislation are therefore different: the former includes suspended healthcare workers and, more generally, the entire community that regards the vaccination policy as persecutory; the latter consists of a presumably much smaller number of professionals struck off for conduct warranting disciplinary action.

Given that one of the lead signatories is also a lawyer, the suggestion of an accidental confusion between suspension and striking off does not offer a credible explanation. The statement is crafted to make the amendment appear as a redress for a wrong inflicted on all healthcare professionals opposed to vaccination, even though the legislation does not have that effect. A politically promised amnesty is far broader than that provided for by law, relying on the public concerned to recognise the signal and not read the text. The provision also presents its own problems, which Buonguerrieri carefully avoids addressing. Reinstatement of those struck off the register is already provided for by law after five years, provided that the person concerned has conducted themselves beyond reproach and has obtained rehabilitation where the striking off resulted from a criminal conviction. The amendment introduces a fast-track procedure for a category defined by an unspecified reference to acts “related to the pandemic”, without explaining why similar conduct should be treated differently depending on the period in which it was committed. The requirement that an appeal must still be pending also creates a paradox, because Article 53 of the professional regulations normally grants such an appeal suspensive effect. The provision therefore risks facilitating the re-registration of those who, precisely because of the ongoing appeal, may not have been definitively struck off the register. Added to this is the question of constitutional reasonableness arising from the preferential treatment accorded to those with a pending appeal compared to those whose appeal has already been decided or who have not lodged one. One need not be a constitutional law expert to understand that a derogation devised in response to the pandemic would require a more robust public justification than simply the desire to send a signal to the electorate.

Buonguerrieri does not address these objections and prefers to speak of a requirement introduced by an ‘obscure circular’ from the then Minister Roberto Speranza. This claim is also false. The vaccination requirement for healthcare workers was established by Article 4 of Decree-Law 44 of 1 April 2021, adopted by the Draghi government and converted by Parliament into Law 76 of 2021. A Member of Parliament may challenge that decision, propose a different assessment and argue that the balance between individual rights and public health was misguided; she cannot attribute to a ministerial circular an obligation introduced by a legislative act published in the Official Gazette. Replacing the law with an ‘obscure’ circular is not a mere lexical detail, because it serves to transform a decision taken by the government and confirmed by Parliament into the arbitrary act of a minister who has become the symbolic target of the anti-vaccine protest. A verifiable legislative matter is thus adapted to a narrative in which healthcare workers were allegedly deprived of their jobs by Speranza’s personal order, whilst FdI is now said to be setting them free. That narrative is politically effective precisely because it sidesteps the content of both the law and the amendment. The phrase ‘paracetamol and watchful waiting’ serves the same purpose. Buonguerrieri claims that this alleged protocol would have worsened patients’ conditions, often leading them to hospital with little hope of recovery, without providing any clinical data capable of supporting such a serious causal link. The ministerial guidelines provided for active monitoring of patients, the checking of vital signs and the use of paracetamol or non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs to manage symptoms; the Council of State also clarified that these were general recommendations, compatible with the doctor’s professional autonomy when exercised on the basis of evidence of efficacy and safety.

To demonstrate that those guidelines caused harm to patients, it would be necessary to identify an alternative treatment, show that it was effective during the period in question, and document worse outcomes amongst those who followed the ministerial recommendations. Buonguerrieri presents nothing of the sort, because the reference to home care does not serve to explain the amendment concerning those struck off the register: it serves to invoke the narrative through which a section of the public has interpreted the entire pandemic. The same approach is applied to vaccines, when the MP states that it is "now well known" that they do not prevent person-to-person transmission. This statement uses observations regarding subsequent variants and the decline in protection to retroactively invalidate the results available in 2021. Against the original virus and the first variants, the vaccines significantly reduced the risk of infection as well as protecting against severe disease. In the Israeli study of nearly 1.2 million people published in February 2021 by the New England Journal of Medicine, the estimated efficacy of the Pfizer vaccine against documented infection was 92 per cent from seven days after the second dose. Those data accurately reflected the epidemiological context at the time and were among the pieces of evidence on which public health decisions were based. Protection against infection declined over time and with the emergence of variants with greater immune evasion capacity, particularly Omicron, whilst protection against severe disease remained higher. This development does not invalidate the previous findings, as a vaccine’s efficacy is measured in relation to the circulating variant, the time elapsed since administration and the outcome under consideration. The Constitutional Court specifically referred to Omicron’s greater ability to evade immunity compared with previous variants, alongside the continued high level of protection against severe disease, and assessed the legislature’s decision in the light of the knowledge available at the time the obligation was introduced.

The data reported in the early stages of the campaign were therefore not a lie exposed by subsequent events. They were accurate figures for the virus and the time period under study, updated as conditions changed. This updating is part of the normal functioning of science, which does not promise immutable truths independent of the evolution of the object under observation. Using Omicron to argue that vaccines did not reduce infection in the preceding period amounts to distorting the timeline, as if an accurate weather forecast for Monday were to become incorrect simply because the weather changed on Friday. Furthermore, the reference to serious adverse effects is presented in isolation from any information on their frequency and from a comparison with the benefits of vaccination. Adverse events do occur, and pharmacovigilance serves to identify them; their detection has made it possible to revise the recommendations for certain vaccines and population groups. The Constitutional Court, citing AIFA’s assessments, noted that serious reactions occurred rarely or very rarely and that the risk they posed did not outweigh the overall benefits of vaccination. Merely raising the possibility of the most serious outcome instils fear, whilst preventing the public from assessing its probability and how it compares with the risk of infection.

At this point, the expression of gratitude directed at Fratelli d’Italia takes on an even more interesting significance, because the party for which Buonguerrieri celebrates his role as spokesperson for the anti-vaxxers is led by Giorgia Meloni herself, who in 2018 wrote that on the subject of vaccines, one should “rely on the scientific community”, avoiding an ideological approach to the issue and leaving the decision to those with the relevant expertise. In March 2021, Meloni also called for the European introduction of the ‘green certificate’, which she regarded as a tool to restore free movement and support the economy without turning it into an ‘immunity passport’. The contrast with Buonguerrieri is stark. Meloni argued that necessary and compulsory vaccines should be identified on the basis of scientific expertise; the FdI MP now describes the requirement for healthcare workers as a measure devoid of scientific basis, imposed by the ideological left through a non-existent circular. Meloni warned politicians not to turn vaccines into an ideological battle; Buonguerrieri builds his defence of the amendment by attributing every decision made during the pandemic to the ‘worst of the ideological left’. The party that at the time pointed to the scientific community as the arbiter now proclaims itself the spokesperson for those who reject the very conclusions that community had reached.

A change in political stance may be legitimate when motivated by new data or a different assessment of the interests at stake. Here, the new data is being used out of its temporal context, whilst legal categories are being superimposed in such a way as to promise those whose membership is suspended what the amendment may eventually grant to some who have been expelled. The party line has not evolved as a result of a scientific review; it has adapted to the emergence of a recognisable electoral base, to whom a narrative is now being offered that is the opposite of the one advocated by Meloni before the anti-vaccination movement became an organised political community. There are therefore two possibilities. Either the words with which Meloni entrusted the assessment of vaccines to science expressed a genuine principle, in which case Buonguerrieri is dragging FdI in the opposite direction, using the party’s name to lend credibility to regulatory and scientific falsehoods. Or that principle only held true until there was a section of the electorate to be won over through mistrust of vaccines and health institutions. In either case, the pride with which the MP thanks her party does not resolve the contradiction: it lays it bare.

Buonguerrieri’s statement does not defend the amendment, as it fails to address its ambiguous scope, the existing procedure for reinstatement and the paradox of the pending appeal. It defends a narrative in which suspended healthcare workers are struck off, a law becomes a circular and the correct data on the first variants are erased by what happened afterwards. Thanks to this rewriting, a regulation intended for a small number of professionals can be sold to the entire anti-vax movement as a collective rehabilitation. The amnesty promised to that audience does not exist, whilst the political advantage generated by the announcement does. Those who were suspended will derive no benefit from the amendment, but may come to see Fratelli d’Italia as the party that declares the pandemic measures to be unjust and adopts their rhetoric. The lead signatory, rather than explaining the legislation she had passed, offers voters an imaginary victory and thanks FdI for turning it into a cause. It is hard to find a clearer demonstration of how a political party can invoke science when it costs nothing and abandon it as soon as a solid bloc of votes appears available.

The amendment concerning healthcare professionals is described in the press as a measure to reinstate anti-vaccine doctors, but the wording used risks obscuring the true nature of the measure. Failure to be vaccinated normally resulted in suspension from practising, whereas the provision approved by the Committee concerns individuals subject to striking off, which is the most severe of disciplinary sanctions and implies conduct incompatible with continued membership of the professional body. The group affected could therefore include healthcare professionals sanctioned not only for their views on vaccines, but also for promoting therapies lacking scientific evidence, for disseminating anti-scientific medical information, or for other behaviour deemed to be in breach of their duties towards patients. The FNOMCeO has interpreted the measure precisely in these terms, denouncing an attempt to undermine the legitimacy of the professional bodies and emphasising that medical prescriptions must be based on available evidence, clinical efficacy and safety.

The possibility of being reinstated on the register already exists and did not require the creation of a special political procedure reserved for cases arising from the pandemic. The standard rules stipulate that at least five years must have elapsed since removal from the register, that the person concerned must have conducted themselves beyond reproach and that, in the event of a criminal conviction, they must have been rehabilitated. The new amendment, however, allows those who have been struck off for ‘non-culpable acts related to the pandemic’ to submit an application within sixty days of the law coming into force, provided that an appeal is still pending before the Central Commission for Healthcare Professionals. The wording chosen does not clarify what conduct is to be considered pandemic-related, what the reference to "non-malicious" conduct means in disciplinary proceedings, or why a healthcare professional struck off during the pandemic should receive more favourable treatment than someone struck off for similar breaches committed at another time. Added to this lack of clarity is a practical contradiction, as an appeal against a disciplinary measure normally has suspensive effect. The fact that an appeal is pending – which the amendment has made a prerequisite for accessing the extraordinary procedure – may therefore coincide with a situation in which the striking off has not yet taken full effect. The law would thus risk creating a fast-track for the re-registration of individuals who, precisely because of the pending appeal, may not have been definitively struck off the register. This is not merely a technicality for legal experts, as it affects the very applicability of the provision.

There are also constitutional concerns that cannot be dismissed, even without seeking to pre-empt the Court’s ruling. As mentioned, the measure would distinguish between healthcare professionals struck off the register on the basis of a very vague link to the pandemic, favouring those who still have an appeal pending over those whose appeals have already been decided or who have not lodged an appeal, without there being any public interest justification proportionate to the derogation. The principles of equality and the protection of health are at stake, because the disciplinary activities of the professional bodies are not intended to punish unwelcome opinions, but to protect patients from professional conduct that is incompatible with scientific knowledge and professional ethics. The Constitutional Court has clarified that legislative measures concerning the appropriateness of therapeutic practices cannot be based on purely discretionary political assessments but must be grounded in scientific knowledge and experimental evidence verified by the competent bodies.

What seems to matter to the government, however, is that even if the text were amended by the House, and even if it encountered difficulties in implementation or were struck down by the courts, the political effect would already have been achieved. The anti-vaccine minority, which for years has interpreted the decisions of professional bodies and health authorities as acts of persecution, is being told that those decisions can be called into question through a special law. There is no need to assume an explicit electoral pact, because the political advantage lies in the symbolic recognition offered to a group that has built its identity on opposition to the institutions dealing with the pandemic and which can be drawn towards the government’s camp through the promise of a comeback. The legislation might not even achieve its legal objective, whilst it would already have achieved its electoral one; empty slogans to deceive a tribe that recognises itself in those slogans, and to win their vote. And never mind if this manoeuvre presupposes that evidence-based medicine is portrayed as just one political stance amongst others, opposed to the views of dissident healthcare professionals. In other words, it does not matter to the politician chasing votes that this is a false representation, because a doctor is not struck off for expressing an opinion on the government or for joining a political movement, but may be struck off when they use their professional authority to disseminate unfounded claims, promote ineffective treatments or breach obligations designed to protect patients. 

In reality, freedom of opinion concerns the citizen; the practice of medicine, however, entails a particular responsibility, since those who seek medical care often find themselves in a vulnerable state and lack the necessary tools to independently assess the validity of a diagnosis or treatment. Professional bodies, regulatory agencies and clinical trials do not constitute a bureaucratic superstructure devised to restrict individual freedom. They are the response that an advanced society has developed to the asymmetry of knowledge between those who treat and those who need treatment, between those who sell a product and those who buy it in the hope of recovery. Without these safeguards, the patient does not become freer, but is left more exposed to the doctor’s authority, to commercial pressure and to the persuasive power of those who promise benefits without being obliged to prove them. Defending scientific standards therefore means defending a concrete form of freedom – the freedom that allows the patient to make decisions based on verified information, rather than on claims made credible by a white coat, a label or political endorsement.

The very subordination of science to political expediency is evident in the initiative on homeopathy. Undersecretary Gemmato took part in a meeting organised in the Senate, on the initiative of a member of Fratelli d’Italia, during which discussions took place with representatives of the homeopathic sector and with stakeholders in favour of a regulatory review. The event, moderated by the president of GUNA, a manufacturer of homeopathic medicines, did not take the form of a scientific assessment in which AIFA, independent pharmacologists or experts in clinical methodology were also represented, but rather that of an initiative aimed at giving institutional consideration to the demands of an economic sector. During the debate, using a hackneyed and overused rhetorical ploy, reference was made to the number of Italians who use homeopathic products, presented as the reason why the legislator should address the sector and provide more comprehensive information. The fact that millions of citizens purchase a product is certainly an economic and social reality, but it says nothing about its ability to treat a disease. Sales measure commercial success, whilst therapeutic efficacy is measured by comparing clinical outcomes under controlled conditions, eliminating as far as possible the effect of expectations, spontaneous fluctuations in symptoms and other factors that may make a treatment appear effective when it is not.

Furthermore, in the case of homeopathy, we are not dealing with a new therapy that has not yet had time to be studied, but rather with a system that has been subjected to decades of experimentation, review and institutional evaluation without any robust and reproducible efficacy superior to that of a placebo having emerged. European scientific academies have concluded that there is no reliable evidence of efficacy for any condition and that the mechanisms proposed by homeopathy are incompatible with established knowledge of chemistry and physics. This judgement does not stem from hostility towards so-called alternative medicines, since any treatment capable of producing a reproducible benefit can be incorporated into medicine regardless of its origin; it stems from the fact that a therapeutic claim must be proven before it is offered to patients. Italian regulations already reflect this distinction. A homeopathic product may be registered via a simplified procedure solely because it does not carry specific therapeutic indications, whilst the possibility of attributing a clinical use to it requires a process in which adequate evidence is presented. There is therefore no ideological ban preventing homeopathy from demonstrating its efficacy; there is, however, an obligation – common to other medicines – to support claims with verifiable data. If the call for more comprehensive package leaflets concerns composition, dilutions, excipients and precautions, there is no conflict with science; if, on the other hand, it were to serve to introduce references to treatable conditions or clinical benefits without producing the necessary evidence, the State would be asked to replace, through a regulatory act, what research has not demonstrated.

The fact that Gemmato is a pharmacist makes his reliance on the popularity of products as a political argument all the more puzzling, because anyone with that background understands the difference between safety, marketing authorisation and clinical efficacy, just as they understand the public responsibility associated with the information contained in the patient information leaflet. Taking part in a meeting with companies in the sector is entirely legitimate; however, accepting their demands without prioritising the quality of the evidence would mean allowing commercial and identity-related considerations to influence the definition of therapeutic standards.

In this context, science does not represent a closed group defending its power against the public, but rather the public method by which it is decided which medical claims can be considered sufficiently reliable to guide treatment. Its authority does not stem from the infallibility of scientists – who are capable of making mistakes – but from the existence of procedures that make errors recognisable and correctable through accessible data, critical scrutiny and reproducibility. When politics replaces this method with the electoral clout of an organised community, it does not broaden pluralism in medicine, but simply makes the standard of evidence variable depending on the lobbying power of the groups concerned.

The two incidents on 14 July thus demonstrate a shared willingness to regard the limits established by science as negotiable. In the first case, a special procedure offers political rehabilitation to healthcare professionals who were struck off the register, partly for anti-scientific conduct during the pandemic; in the second, a sector lacking convincing evidence is granted institutional attention for demands that could blur the distinction between a registered product and an effective treatment. In both cases, the majority turns to groups capable of transforming a health issue into a matter of identity and of rewarding, at the ballot box, those who recognise their demands. A parliamentary majority can change the laws, but it cannot make an ineffective product effective, nor can it transform conduct that is incompatible with the evidence and dangerous to the public into good medicine. It does, however, succeed very well in confusing the public, weakening the bodies tasked with protecting them, and politically rewarding those who have built their support on mistrust of science. When the mere prospect of a handful of votes is enough to produce this result, public health ceases to be the criterion for decision-making and is replaced by the currency of electoral support.