Review by Beatrice On 27-Jun-2023
The high costs (human and economic) are probably the reason why, in the field of environmental and experimental carcinogenesis, words replace facts, opinions replace data, and conferences and committee reports overwhelm good laboratory data.
With these words of Professor Cesare Maltoni, we understand how his scientific commitment was closely linked to his political commitment.
A pioneer in the field of environmental and industrial carcinogenesis and cancer prevention, he waged a strenuous battle to defend public health and the environment.
Vinyl chloride, maldehyde, benzene, formaldehyde, asbestos, MTBE, pesticides, aspartame glyphosate: a list of substances studied by Professor Maltoni since the 1960s decrees the beginning of Mellara and Rossi's docufilm.
From the very first scenes, one understands the absolute dedication to research and inexhaustible passion for human health, as well as the inevitable need to check interviews and documentation of his work.
A narrative voice announces his death on January 22, 2001, and accompanies the entire docufilm, vividly characterizing the professional and human itinerary of this great researcher.
Born in Faenza in 1930, he graduated in pathology in February 1954 and soon left for Chicago to study with researcher Albert Tannembaum, head of the oncology department at Michael Reese Hospital.
In 1961 he returns to Italy and exposes the concrete experimental evidence from which shows that the tumor exerts control over the "healthy" connective tissue cells that surround it and that it is these that allow it to receive from the body the nutrients that enable it to grow.
The docufilm dwells on the Professor's extraordinary goals regarding European cervical cancer screening, as well as the carcinogenicity of asbestos and vinyl chloride, and the belief that most cancers have environmental origins and that investing in primary prevention means preventing humans from coming into contact with harmful substances. Important is the description of a figure of enormous political value in that he was the first to convince Italy's largest chemical company, Montedison, to test the carcinogenicity of VCM on rats.
The narrative underscores the importance of Luigi Orlandi, a former partisan, PCI senator with long social experience, and president of the "Bologna Hospitals" in supporting the research work of the entire Ramazzini Institute team led by Prof. Maltoni, as well as the hospital facility in the Bolognese countryside, Bentivoglio Castle, which still houses the research center now named in his honor.
Hepatic angiosarcoma had been linked by Maltoni to vinyl chloride, a multipotent carcinogen that affects organs and tissues even at low doses, an incredible Nobel Prize-winning discovery that sent delegations from all over the world to verify the correctness of the scientific method.
The political figure of the scientist presented in this compelling work documents the continuing testimony at trial around the world on the carcinogenic effect of vinyl chloride until the 1998 Marghera verdict in which ALL OF THEM WERE ABSOLVED!
There is no shortage of documents and interviews in which the professor declares that big industry, after the vinyl chloride shock, continues to impose its rules on research to reduce the impact of independent studies and to undertake independent, biased research.
A man full of energy if suffering from the malady of living, lonely and in need of affection, Professor Maltoni is described on the day after Pier Paolo Pasolini's murder as he was seen opening all the newspapers recounting the incident over the large tables on which he worked, was seen smoking a gauloises for the first time, reading in silence, closing all the newspaper pages and returning to work.
He recounted the millions of poor people forced to work with asbestos, exposed to an ongoing slaughter that needed to be stopped; as well as the fact that" the industry had gone too far and growth was now out of control."
A proponent of the need to create organizations that made people communicate the close relationship that existed between health and the quality of the environment, he went so far as to disrupt the world of petrochemical industry such as Exxon Mobil with his research and began to receive threats for it.
The docufilm, highlights the economic speculation that hides the false solution to the problem of lead in benzene and Maltoni's struggle against the scientific denigration of results that aim to procrastinate judgment and strike at the capabilities of scientific research.
Ethics, in the face of technique, becomes pat-ethics, because how does it prevent the technique that can from not doing what it can? Never in history has a powerlessness been seen to arrest a power. And ethics, in the age of technique, celebrates all its impotence
The astonishing biography on the scientist devotes attention to the realization, strongly desired by the professor, of the Hospice for advanced and progressive oncological patients; a path undertaken regarding palliative medicine for the needs of the terminally ill, which began with just a few members, grew to 15 thousand and now to almost 30 thousand.
A major study of the cancer patient's experience carried out by Maltoni that had this great scholar identify the various stages that guided the journey from denial/isolation, to anger, to bargaining, to resignation and to the stage of depression.
Stock footage, testimonies, and articles focus attention on one of the most brilliant scientists of the 20th century; an unstoppable scholar always ready to deepen and spread his knowledge and boldly expose the damage done to public health.
He died of a heart attack on January 22, 2001, and left a legacy to which this filmmaking restores great credit.
Humanity that treats the world as a throw-away world also treats itself as a throw-away humanity
27-Jun-2023 by Beatrice