Minister Schillaci has zeroed the appointments of the government commission on vaccines after the protests of the scientific community. The National Consultative Technical Group on vaccinations has a crucial function: to offer recommendations based on scientific evidence, taking on a technical, independent and authoritative role in vaccination choices.

The controversy over the contested appointments

The inclusion of two members with critical positions towards vaccines, Eugenio Serravalle and Paolo Bellavite, caused strong reactions from the scientific community, politics and public opinion.

The Nitag is not a talk show or an arena where all opinions are equivalent. It is a technical body: it serves to evaluate scientific data and formulate vaccination recommendations that guide the health policies of an entire country. It is not a space of political confrontation, nor a place where to seek the compromise between opposing visions. Entering people known for critical or ambiguous positions towards vaccinations in that context does not mean guaranteeing pluralism, but by speaking the mission of the Committee very mission. The reaction to the composition of the Nitag was quick and compact. In a few days, over 35 thousand signatures asked to withdraw those appointments, supported by top plane figures such as Nobel Giorgio Parisi. The Federation of Orders of Doctors, the Italian Hygiene Society, the transversal pact for science have raised their voices. Not to defend a “truth of state”, but to reiterate that a technical body cannot be weakened by inserting those who contest the scientific prerequisites on which that organ is based. To make the situation even more serious was the position of Francesca Russo, a member of the Nitag and responsible for prevention for the Veneto Region. Russo has resigned from the Committee, explaining in a letter to the Ministry of Health that the two new members “have repeatedly expressed public positions inconsistent with scientific evidence on vaccinations, in some cases even arriving or disseminating messages contrary to national vaccination strategies”.

Meloni speaks of “missing pluralism”

Pluralism does not mean putting those who base their positions on decades of clinical studies on the same plane and those who entrust themselves to personal convictions or denied theories. Nobody would ask to insert a supporter of the idea that earthquakes do not exist in a committee on anti -seismic construction, or in a board on oncology, those who deny the link between smoke and tumors. Yet when it comes to vaccines and homeopathy this principle seems to falter, as if everything was questionable. No, it is not.

The affair has not remained confined within national borders. Also the British Medical Journal – one of the most authoritative scientific journals in the world – has dedicated an article to chance, underlining the anomaly of include known figures for antivaccinal positions in a technical organism of that level. Faced with this pressure, the Minister of Health Orazio Schillaci chose the most clear way: to dissolve the entire Nitag. A reset that leaves no room for interpretations. A necessary decision even if Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni spoke of “missing pluralism”. But here it was not a question of limiting the democratic debate: it was a question of preventing confusion and disinformation from entering a technical body whose function is based solely on scientific evidence. This is why talking about “pluralism” is misleading. Democracy needs political, cultural, social pluralism but science does not work like this: it does not proceed for opinions, it proceeds for evidence. A scientific committee must represent different skills, not opposing opinions. It must discuss data, not of ideologies. Mixing these plans means undermining the credibility of health institutions and disorienting citizens.

A necessary decision

The decision of Minister Schillaci to reset the group was drastic, but necessary. It meant putting seriousness, rigor and competence to the center. This episode also marks a victory of science. Not so much because politics has bent on the will of scientists, but because it has recognized that there are fields in which the scientific method cannot be relativated. If today the minister had the courage to take such a clear step, it is also thanks to a civic and scientific mobilization that has shown how high, in the country, the penalty demand is. This time it won common sense and not by arrogance but because without scientific method that produces solid evidence there would be no protection of health or safety for the community. What, personally I hope is that the same compactness and determination of the scientific community also manifests itself on other great themes, from climatic emergencies to new health challenges such as, for example, antibiotic residences.