In Italy if you get breast cancer, hospitalization and surgery, as well as all the preliminary diagnostic tests, are free. Then, if after the surgery, the oncologist suggests chemotherapy, that also is free, as radiotherapy is. If during chemotherapy your white blood cells decrease worryingly, the oncologist prescribes a medicine called “neulasta” which you pay 1 or 2 euros. If you look at the price on the box, is 1489,50 euros. I believe, but I don’t have the statistical data to prove it, that in any other country of the world a hospital sanitary treatment like this is utopic. In Italy this treatment is a right also for unemployed and propertyless. I am also convinced that is legitimate to have doubts about the usefulness and validity of modern medicine based on science and consequently to prefer relying on homeopathic, ayurvedic, hammer medicine or to drastically change food habits and join vegan or macrobiotic diets. I respect other’s choices to the point that I have often adopted and benefited from some of them. But I remain absolutely convinced that it should stay an inviolable right to choose which kind of medical care one wants to receive. This is why Italian public healthcare and, by extension, cancer research in Italy, must be defended and supported. In occasion of the breast cancer prevention month, I invite you all to sustain the IFOM ( FIRC Institute of Molecular Oncology). DONATE NOW