Interview

An interview with Professor Mario Emanuele Bianchetti, president and founder of the Fondazione Incontri di Madruzzo

By Maria Chiara Cervi

Mario Emanuele Bianchettiis a man who believes in dreams. He believes so much in them that he never stops dreaming. Every time he succeeds in fulfilling a desire in life, he starts a new one. He made lots of effort, he had lots of satisfaction, and above all, he has a never-ending interest in life and in the system that regulates it. Due to necessity, Mario Emanuele Bianchetti was a miner for a long time, then he worked as a financial manager and became very successful. All of the sudden his life changed. His greatest dream was medicine, because of that, he enrolled at the age of 50 to the University and became a vascular surgeon. At that time he had a new calling: facing the major topics related to human health and the quality of life. Even this dream as the previous ones, concretized in Madruzzo Incontri Foundation, which for the last thirty years has been playing a major role in spreading the concept of the Human Health.

1. Professor Bianchetti, the claim of Fondazione Incontri di Madruzzo states "... Health can be preserved and increased only if recognized and not only perceived as a development matter." What is the border between perception and knowledge? What is the distinction that makes the difference?

A Few years ago it was trendy to speak about Health. Alas, nowadays from the economic-financial viewpoint, it is a “black hole”; as a result of this technological and scientific progress has come to a standstill, we continue to mix up Health with Healthcare, and Healthcare with Medicine. Tocqueville and Mill in their essay regarding freedom, stated that a conscious and informed citizen is the sole guardian of his own physical-mental and spiritual health, as health is nothing more than a group of services, which the citizen applies to feel satisfied according to the indications that make him different from all others! We are now approaching to the Healthcare Culture concept that is not related to the opinionated feature of the elite class, but to the image that everyone should have of himself, his own consciousness, and moral reliability. The acknowledgment of this concept and of its importance has no elements to be only perceived, but strongly recognized, in order to be able to develop them. You are asking me, the border between the awareness and the appreciation and what is the gap that makes the difference. The answer is cultural! The level of the education of the citizens, the other is a consequence. The Foundation has always been committed to this in helping to create a super highway for all the healthcare workers.

2. First of all the Fondazione Incontri di Madruzzo promotes the Healthcare Culture through an international dialogue not only among medical personnel but also involving social, ethical, moral, and philosophical specialists. Therefore, do we have to intend Health as a holistic approach to life?

This question goes to the heart of the Foundation. To interpret the "no elementary systems" as that of the existence it is nearly an unacceptable scientific paradigm in its absolute value. Therefore, the health can be understood as a balance between universal and astrophysics energies that force human beings to change compared to the previous evolution. Herewith, I encourage doctors, physicists, philosophers, astrophysicists, expertises of human social, ethical, and moral problems to explore the “human change” that will take place in time.

3. Medicine , Healthcare, and health: how is it possible to create a worthy surrounding?

I truly wish that they could be recognized as different worlds and each one far-away to each other! Why? Because nowadays, starting from Hippocrates Medicine is the science that observes, studies, cares, and prevents the physical and mental illnesses of the human being. Therefore what does it have in common with a bureaucratic management body or organization that should be ethical-political supportive, to the medical science? In reality, we have to face a “monster” created by political parties that does not sustain the medical science in its wide meaning, but even influences it.

4. What are the most urgent healthcare problems affecting the civil society?

I would like to tell you that every civil society has its problems, that it deserves, but I will not say that. I state instead that the problems of our Healthcare are all urgent and have an irreversible course, demagogic statements apart. Let us ask to an "obese" person to run a hundred meters steeplechase not in a record olympic time but at least as a non-professional one. He will not even answer, and of course he is not going to try, furthermore he is not going to think about. The mentioned problems, cannot be solved by athletes but by the straightforward people.

5. During one of your many speeches, you said: "The Fear is not a deficiency of courage, but a lack of ideas". Which ideas the scientific authorities have to work on in order to solve the problems of healthcare? What role does the Fondazione Incontri di Madruzzo play in this context ?

The statement is not mine, but by a philosopher of the '500, Erasmus of Rotterdam. I answer not referring to the paralysing "fear", known as a lack of courage, but referring to the lack of "ideas" of the civil society and not of the scientific or medical authorities. As I mentioned before it is the Healthcare that has to support the medical science in its continuous search for the prevention and care of diseases. Will it ever happen? Besides, the humanitarian project, in order to help those people suffering from specific diseases, the Foundation is committed to spread these simple and natural ideas that should be easy to implement. Unfortunately, we read the answer to the above question every day in the daily newspapers.