From their website MedicinaDiSegnale.It

The association of doctors, AMPAS, was founded to wake and shake up medical practice and to discuss “out loud” (with solid scientific bases) how much the basic concepts of dietetics have changed in the last 15 years. The founding members are 12 experts: internists, immunologists, gastroenterologists, lung disease specialists, orthopedists, general practitioners, nutritionists, psychiatrists, dentists, aesthetic surgeons, anesthetists, acupuncturists (along with, as ordinary members, paediatricians, cardiologists, food science specialists) every day in the front line with their patients, every day in search of ideas and methods to cure and heal.

FromRome.Info publishes here the English translation of their communique:

AMPAS Communiqué of 21/4

With serenity, but also with determination, the doctors of the Medicine Information Group AMPAS (735 members, many of whom are involved in the front line), are worried about the possible authoritarian drifts taking place, and wish to clarify that the constitutionally guaranteed rights for citizens are being violated.

1. Injury to constitutionally guaranteed freedoms

During this period, some constitutional rights (freedom of movement, the right to study, the possibility to work, the possibility of access to treatment for all non-Coronavirus patients) have been seriously violated and a serious violation of our right to choose treatment is looming on the horizon. All this in the absence of a real parliamentary debate, and by means of emergency decrees. We woke up in a nightmare without being able to leave the house except by signing self-certifications on whose constitutionality several jurists expressed perplexities, chased by helicopters, drones and law enforcement vehicles with a deployment of forces never seen even in the most subversive moments of our country’s history.

Now an app is coming into force for tracking the movements of individuals, in violation of our right to privacy, and that someone already thinks to use for extra-healthy purposes.

But one of the most serious violations of our constitutional rights is the right to choice of care, which is well defined both in the constitution and in the Oviedo European document. We doctors are guilty of not having adequately challenged, two years ago, a law that effectively deprived the paediatrician of all dignity and decision-making autonomy.

Let us remember that an unjustified impairment of rights is always the precondition for other possible injuries.

2. Conflicts of interest

The “scientific” actors in the drafting and promotion of the aforementioned Lorenzin law do not seem to be very different from the “consultants” of today’s emergency.

We wonder if the information coming from the figures working as consultants of the Ministry of Health is spread with the communication of the conflicts of interest they may have with companies in the sector. It would be neither ethical nor lawful to have consultants working with large pharmaceutical companies.

Still on the subject of conflict of interest: did Parliament establish the members of the Task Force recently set up to deal with the so-called phase 2? Are there possible conflicts of interest? They appear to have asked for immunity from the consequences of their actions. But should it not be institutional figures who take “decisions” on the future of our country? It is one thing to advise, it is another to decide “in the name and on behalf”. On whose authority?

3. Freedom of expression and contradictory

Journalism should be a comparison of ideas, discussion, evaluation of different points of view. We wonder how much freedom of expression is guaranteed even for professionals who do not think like us. Instead, we see journalists celebrating the “capture” of a poor runner on the beach by a massive deployment of forces, and the systematic deletion of any hint of different treatment systems compared to the “official narrative” of the salvific vaccine, whether vitamin C or heparin, in the total absence of contradictory.

In this intoxicated picture, the major networks and newspapers continuously broadcast a commercial, offensive to the common intelligence, in which it is clearly stated that theirs is the only serious and reliable information: the rest only fake. In this way the atmosphere is created thanks to which you intervene on any movie, social profile, website that is not considered in line with the official narrative. No dictatorship can survive if it doesn’t have the support of enslaved information.

4. The Vaccine: a solution to all evils?

Everyone is waiting, as a liberation, for the new vaccine (which journalists and one-way virologists continue to boast as the only possible solution), forgetting some facts. The first is that the vaccine is developed on the basis of theoretical projections on viruses in circulation in the previous year, and therefore it is a “gamble” (it is common experience every winter that many people vaccinated get sick anyway). The second is the continuous strong variability of an RNA virus like the Coronavirus, of which it seems there are already several variants. Nevertheless, in disregard of the risk of viral interference (so the vaccine for a different virus can exacerbate the response to another virus), the Lazio region proposes that all health care professionals and all over 65 to carry out ordinary flu vaccination, violating once again (if the obligation were real) the constitutional right to choose a cure. And the defenders of the constitution, they are silent. It’s easy to imagine what will happen as soon as the new life-saving vaccine is made available, with accelerated procedures and minimal safety testing. As doctors, we want to stress the importance of respecting the freedom of choice of treatment as constitutionally defined.

5. Children and physical movement

A note is necessary to understand the seriousness of the situation also with regard to physical movement and closure in the home of our children. The WHO itself has pronounced itself on the matter, recommending that they go out into the open air and physical movement as essential health and immune support. Almost all the other European countries have made it possible for children to go out alone to play sports and take walks with them. We have not. With a rule of incredible harshness, veined with an unacceptable paternalism (“if we let them free then they are not able to stay away”) we have created psychological and physical discomfort (obesity and sedentariness) and forced the few forced to work (health care, farmers, transporters, grocery stores) to somersaults.

Moreover, we cannot fail to point out the total inattention of these draconian measures towards families with disabled children (and in particular autistic children) for whom the daily moment of going out into the open air represents an indispensable support to their difficult condition. The most fragile, as always, pay the hardest toll.

All this was not enough to trigger the war of suspicion and denunciation among the jealous of other people’s freedoms.

As Noam Chomsky lucidly writes, setting one’s subjects against another is a splendid system for any dictatorship to distract the people from what power is really perpetrating to their detriment.

The intervention of police teams with quads and helicopters in pursuit of isolated old men on the trails only reinforces the idea that they can all be sheriffs, demonstrating the perfect success of inducing psychosis by power.

6. Economic damage of the lockdown: an epochal disaster

Some sectors, such as tourism, catering or automotive, have experienced turnover reductions close to 100%. This will mean, as initial estimates say, tens of millions of unemployed. That they will stop paying their current mortgages. They will stop buying consumer goods. They will lose their businesses or their companies built up over decades of sacrifice. We doctors know what this means in health care: thousands and thousands of new deaths. People who get sick, commit suicide (the first signs are already visible), withdraw their savings in the bank. We need to leave immediately, everyone, without hesitation. To reduce the damage, which in any case, even if it were to start again today, will be epochal. If tomorrow we discover that someone has surreptitiously prolonged the Italian lockdown (to date the toughest in Europe) to keep panic high and find an environment more ready for the vaccination obligation, we only hope that justice can take its course with the utmost harshness. People lose their jobs and starve to death.

7. The cures

Here, too, the subject is embarrassing. It’s understandable that a new virus can disorient even the best doctors for some time. But as the information builds up, we should listen to those in the field who could better understand. A Facebook group of which many of us are members, which started out spontaneously as self-help, and which has about 100,000 members, has drawn up effective treatment recommendations that are then sent to the ministry.

Now that it seems clear and established that death occurs due to strong intravascular coagulation many lives can be saved with the use of simple heparin. But it is not enough: specific attention is also needed depending on the timing of the disease: at the first symptoms, at the first aggravation, or in the procoagulative phase. In particular, we signal doctors find it difficult to understand the massive use of paracetamol or other antipyretics once it is established that fever is a powerful antiviral for the body. An inter-collaborative document is being prepared on this delicate subject that deserves more extensive discussion.

If anyone, however, is allowed to delay the adoption of effective treatment systems, for less than clear reasons (and some television interventions aimed at discrediting heparin seem to go in that direction), expect strong reactions from those who have risked their lives on the front line.

The judiciary is now investigating the serious errors committed in some regions in the management of residences for the elderly, real outbreaks of infection with unfortunately a very high number of deaths, given the fragility and polymorbidity of the guests, almost always treated with statins, antihypertensives, analgesics, antidiabetics. Beyond the regional responsibilities, which the judiciary will evaluate, it is important to make numbers: of the 22,000 total national deaths, as many as 7,000 (30%!) are inpatients in RSA. A shocking figure, but one that should make us reflect on the significant increase in deaths in some provinces.

Mistakes made, in good or bad faith, have cost the lives of more than 100 doctors and a large number of other health workers who have been sent to the slaughter without a precise plan and without the necessary protective equipment. Our deepest gratitude goes to them.

8. Delayed or unauthorized blood tests

One of the ways to understand how many people have already encountered the virus (let’s stop calling them “infected”, because sometimes they have only had mild flu symptoms and produced wonderful antibodies) is to perform a serological test, which is low cost and shows ongoing disease (IgM+) or outdated disease and presence of memory antibodies (IgG+). Those who are IgG+ could already serenely start moving again without any particular caution either for themselves or for others. The sensitivity and specificity of these tests are very high, unlike those of swabs. Why so much hostility on the part of government and health institutions that they are forbidden to use them “until a reliable test is approved”? The cases of Ortisei (45% positive) and Vò Euganeo (75%) tell us that the virus has probably already spread much more than we think and that the measures in place may not be so necessary, at least in some areas of Italy.

9. A few numbers

Please spare us the 6:00 p.m. drama. Those numbers are unreliable and part of a consummate direction. Alongside Borrelli sometimes parade some figures whose potential conflicts of interest are never declared.

The number of “infected” is meaningless, since it depends on the number of tampons carried out. And the vast majority of the population may already have encountered the virus without knowing it. Oxford University estimates speak of 11 million potential positives already now. If this figure were true, the lethality of Sars-Cov2 would be truly derisory: 0.05%, even taking the mortality data as true. But even on these remains the terrible doubt about the deaths FOR and WITH Coronavirus. Several testimonies put in strong doubt the data, since every day in Italy they leave us about 1900 people (ISTAT data) and it is not difficult to extract 400 of them, among them, that are also positive for the virus. However, it is clear to those who work in the front line that the serious intravascular coagulation induced by the encounter between the virus and a fertile ground for him (average age of death 78 years, average 3.3 pathologies present) can quickly lead to death fragile individuals who, however, would have gladly lived a few more years. In England they found that 73% of patients admitted to the ICU for CoronaVirus are overweight or obese. As Dr. Lustig says: “The virus does not distinguish who is infected but it distinguishes very well who kills.

These fragile patients, however, would rather die in the arms of their loved ones than alone in this terrible way.

In other countries they used different methods of calculation. Could we not ask for more precise and reliable data and avoid spreading panic and concern?

10. Other countries in Europe and elsewhere: very different lock-downs

Other countries both in Europe and around the world are adopting partial lock-downs that are much less rigid than the Italian one, so much so that the full lock-down is now sadly called “Italian-style”. Yet we have the problem before all the others and they are making us believe that we will end the lock-down at near last place. Because of  joggers and children taking a stroll, of course. It’s a pity that in many European countries the strolls of adults and children, a trip to the sea, and access to second homes is allowed almost everywhere, provided that social distancing is maintained. But were we not in a united Europe? Why this cruelty in Italy alone? Are we still the guinea pig country? We strongly demand that we align ourselves as soon as possible with the directives in force in most European countries.

11. Supporting the immune system: the healthy protect

A key point, which has totally escaped our rulers and our media, is that the healthy (that 85% of people who have encountered the virus and not even noticed it, or suffered mild symptoms, soon building the necessary antibodies) lead a healthier lifestyle that has strengthened and forged the immune system. Eating healthy food, doing daily sports, leading a less stressful life (perhaps living outside the city), taking vitamins and natural supplements, doing without unnecessary medicines, giving up smoking, drugs or drinking without control, is a commitment that we would like to see somehow valued as virtuous behavior at least in relation to the savings that allows the national health system and, in this case, the protection from the spread of the virus and not occupying a bed, thus left free for another.

On the other hand, if we turn on the TV, we only see advertisements for medicines and sweets. And among the very few shops open, in full lock-down, the state has thought well of leaving the tobacco shops. Smoking, filled with sweets, sedentary and stuffed with drugs: this is the message that the state has given us during this period. Soon, the vaccine will come.

12. The demands

Aware that the future will be new and different only if we understand that our biology does not allow us to live in overcrowded, polluted, smoking, drugging and eating only industrial and refined foods in complete sedentariness, we want to hope that the “after emergency” can be better than the “before”. But this can only happen if many of the things that we are here to ask for happen, some immediate, others soon.

We therefore strongly request, on behalf of the AMPAS association and the 735 doctors who are part of it today (as well as the many non-medical sympathizers):

• The immediate restoration of institutional and constitutional legality, reminding parliament of its democratic functions and the debate that must necessarily result from them.
• The immediate cancellation of task forces and external consultants whose conflicts of interest could be read, when they are entrusted with responsibilities that are not institutionally foreseen, as a circumvention of democratic rules.
• The immediate restoration of the right to work for millions of Italians, who, if they cannot get their salaries, will soon be starving with foreseeable consequences for public order (in compliance with the new rules of distancing as long as necessary).
• The immediate restoration of the right to study for millions of children, young people, university students who have been deprived from one day to the next of one of their fundamental rights (in compliance with the new rules, for as long as necessary).
• The protection of the right to the choice of treatment, already violated by previous laws, to prevent any possible new medical treatment from becoming mandatory. Any new measure issued in an emergency will have to include an end date, in order not to “attempt” some to make restrictions on freedoms a rule.
• The blocking of any “app” or other computer device aimed at controlling the movements of people in blatant violation of our privacy.
• The immediate reopening of the possibility for adults and children to go out in the open air to practice sport, walking, social life, albeit in compliance with the necessary rules.
• The immediate re-establishment of a television or media pre-requisitte, with hospitality in the broadcasts of exponents, obviously qualified, of different points of view, with immediate removal (or relegation to different tasks) of presenters who have not been able to fulfill their duty as journalists.
• Declaration of conflicts of interest by any health professional who expresses a television opinion or participates in a debate. Failure to do so must be punished by proportionate media removal. The viewer must know whether or not the speaker receives millions of euros from a company.
• The ban on closing or deleting sites or social profiles in the absence of serious violations of the law. Any cancellations must in any case be promptly notified and justified. The removal of ideas and opinions just because they are different from the official mainstream is not worthy of a civilized country.
• The prohibition for law enforcement agencies to interpret at their own discretion the rules of public order set out in the decrees. Any abuse, even the slightest, must be prosecuted.
• The prohibition of expulsion of doctors for the sole expression of ideas different from those of ordinary medicine. Dialogue and confrontation between different ideas has always enriched science, which changes and evolves. Let us not overestimate our current miserable knowledge.
• The timely activation of new treatment protocols in all Covid19 hospitals that, in addition to ensuring the health of healthcare workers, provide for the use of vitamins, minerals, ozone therapy and all natural and low cost effective and documented treatment, accompanying gradually with drugs more at risk of side effects only in case of aggravation, and activating only for the crisis or pre-crisis phase the use of immunosuppressive drugs and heparin.
• The immediate availability for the entire population of IgM and IgG serological tests that can immediately allow both to monitor the state of spread of the virus in different areas and to give the possibility to those who are IgG+ to resume their lives without any limitation.
• In a hypothesis of gradual spread of viral immunity, particular attention should be paid to the fragile population: elderly, obese, hypertensive, diabetics, heart attackers (the most affected categories). While respecting the right of choice of care, no obligation can be given except temporarily, but only strong recommendations and detailed information on the risks of infection. A fragile individual must be able to choose whether to risk dying embracing his or her grandchild, or to remain alive indoors without seeing anyone.
• A strong information campaign about the risks of a bad lifestyle and how that lifestyle increases the risk of being infected. Or do we want to be forced to wear masks all our lives and no longer be able to hug each other to allow someone to smoke and swell with drugs and sugary snacks, disdaining any kind of physical movement? Everyone will remain free to hurt themselves but at least the state will not be able to say that they are accomplices.
• The ban, at least at this time, on advertising drugs and fattening confectionery products on television networks and in newspapers, as is already being done with smoking.
• Immediate help to the many families in crisis who, because of this total lock-down, have stopped working and producing income, in very simple ways (e.g. value-for-money tickets for food purchases). The best help for companies, instead of alms, will be a timely reopening.

Better doctors, in a better country,

AMPAS

www.medicinadisegnale.it