MCS, a secret affair

Unlike other countries, where position papers of governamental agencies on health issues are given a period of public comment, in Italy things go very differently.

In 2004 the National Institute of Health (Istituto Superiore di Sanità, ISS) held a one-day conference on MCS, during which some doctors, like Dr Roberto Lucchini and prof. Lorenzo Alessio from the University of Brescia, reported their own experience with MCS diagnosis.

Dr Ottaviano Tapparo, dentist from Munich (Germany), talked about his experience of treatment with amalgam safe-protocol removal in MCS patients.

In 2004-2005 the Council of 4 regions - Tuscany, Lazio, Emilia-Romagna and Abruzzo- recognized MCS and stated the opening of health centers for the diagnosis and treatment of MCS, but also social support. The recognition was a consequence of a petition that gathered about 25,000 subscriptions.

MCS sufferes though that their problems were having a solution, but the hope was soon lost when it come out that in the Regional Commissions there were psychologists and doctors of occupational medicine.Why?

Immediately after the recognition of MCS by the 4 regions, in fact, the SIMLII, a professional organization of occupational medicine, published a position paper about MCS. The main concept of it was that MCS doesn't exist and if MCS exists it's a psychiatric obsession of patients against chemicals. Moreover, the paper also suggested that doctors who make diagnosis of MCS are illuding the sufferers and making the National Health System and Insurances lost (irrationally) money.

Soon afterwords, the doctors of the regional commissions refused to make diagnosis and asked for more research to the Istituto Superiore di Sanità or ISS (the National Institute of Health), that created a commission. And time passed....

The inter-regional commission took more than one year to study about 1,000 articles from peer-reviewed journals. There were no news about the progressions of such commission until in the summer of 2007, at a court in Florence, the lawyer of the Region Tuscany presented a position paper of the inter-regional commission stating that MCS doesn't exist and people with such sensitivities can be treated sympomatically (that is to say with drugs or psychotherapy).

Most interestingly, that position paper shouldn't have been open to the public because it had not been licenced by the Superior Council of Health (Consiglio Superiore di Sanità, CSS, the Superior Council of Health is the the Consultive arm of the ministry of Health). Any position paper about health issues, in fact, must pass the evaluation of such Council.

That document was presented as official but it was only the opinion of the subscribers and not of the ministry of Health. So the MCS patient who had opened the controversy vs the Region Tuscany to have the right to be treated abroad in specialized centers, lost her battle.

The document of the inter-regional commission was somehow shocking because suggested a questionnaire with questions about the family income, the ratial identity, the state of marriage or divorce and even about any mortgages!

One more year had to pass before the final judgment of the CSS. This came on the 25 september 2008: MCS is not a real condition because there is not a single diagnostic test.

So even if the italian organization of MCS people wrote to the CSS twice to ask for a better evaluation of other studies not considered by the inter-regional report, the CSS preferred to deny the illness.