Progetto Amazzone
CVerde Women, global prevention and sustainable development.
Let us transform cancer prevention into eco/logical objectives
Manifesto of Palermo / Amazon Project 2008
Success in our struggle against cancer is increasingly bound up with our vision
of the future. Primary prevention indicates a number of priorities and strategic
choices to be adopted by those whose task it is to make decisions, including political
ones, about issues concerning the environment, culture and health. A reappraisal
of the relations between human beings and the environment in order to restore compatibility
between nature and technology, between our expectations of recovery and the quality
of life, between a balanced management of innovation and the use of drug therapies
– all these issues cannot be addressed without at the same time discussing how to
eliminate or at least how to reduce the risk factors in cancer which lie at the
root of the problem.
These present-day issues force us to ask fundamental questions that shift the problem
of health and the survival of the individual onto the wider horizon of human destiny.
The phenomenon of cancer marks out this horizon decisively. In addition to the problem
of the multiplicity of the causes which is not restricted to the sphere of biology
but calls human action to account, in addition to the dramatic impact of the disease
on daily life and on thought, the workings of the cancer system are constantly linked
to some moment in the future. The system is always on the point of making some confident
statement about eventual success but never actually delivers a definitive solution.
The greatest risks of cancer which are recognised today come from the utilitarian
transformation of the environment subservient to the logic of a form of economic
development determined by capitalism, by the priority of profit over the human being
and nowadays by globalisation as well. The chemical and genetic manipulation of
the food chain, industrial pollution, climate change, the use of carcinogenic substances
– fertilisers, pesticides, plastic, chlorine as well as the impact of microwaves,
mobile telephones, aerials and computers – are difficult problems to address and
solve, especially when we bear in mind the quagmire of economic and political interests
and the great powers of which they are an expression.
Women propose alternative alliances to the sensitive sectors of society with a view
to setting up a cultural project in defence of the right to life and health. A prime
object of this project is to ensure that the debate about cancer enters the political
and economic debate because this type of development is unsustainable: it is passed
off as progress but the price to pay is too high. Such a change requires new ideas
and courageous reappraisals.
Women intervene in this debate and express their solidarity; their method is interdisciplinary:
they bring together their knowledge, their intuitions and their passion – their
activity, their experience and their desire for change.
Areas of research on sustainable resources.
Body, Environment, Science and Communication.
The Body
Perception of oneself and representation of the body in the social and communication
systems are deeply affected by the experience of illness. This conditions the capacity
to resist cancer at an individual and a social level A valiant body, capable of
sustaining its own integrity when confronted with the most difficult trials, is
an extraordinary resource of sustainability. On the contrary an impoverished body,
subjected to a continuous diminution of its values by advertising making improper
use of a woman’s body, everyday violence (not just actual violence but that of television
communication as well) and the market consumer models, which are becoming increasingly
imperative – all this jeopardises the quality of the body’s response and weakens
its resistance. Breast cancer, because of its implications in the psycho-physical
life of a woman and because of its subversive action with regard to the value system
of western civilization, helps us to turn a firm and critical eye towards a medical
system that represents itself as neutral but is actually male-oriented. Gender deconstruction
enters into the question of health as a synthesis of the knowledge of various disciplines.
The specific feminine characteristics of caring, sensitive and intuitive intelligence
and ethical integrity must be exploited to the full in a culture of difference and
separation. These elements could be termed “constants of resistance”, and over the
centuries societies have cyclically taken advantage of them in order to ensure their
own survival.
Proposal and objectives
- Making the best and fullest use of the body and care in gender differences as sources of sustainability.
- Working towards a greater participation of women in the public management of health and in determining the direction of scientific research.
The Environment
The relationship between cancer and the environment in industrial societies is central
to the ideas behind the project set forth in this manifesto. The term environment
is here used in its widest acceptation - physical, natural and social - where every
event is significant in the dialectic between people and the transformations concerning
them. Here attention should also be drawn to factors such as emigration which modify
the environment and place new demands on migrating bodies. This dialectic concerns
two fundamental subjects: the body and the polis. Social and environmental policies
have a direct bearing on the way we live. A vision of the future necessary for success
in the struggle against cancer will result from an authentic alliance between the
body and politics. An economy based on industrial and technological development
such as our own has no choice but to reinvent itself; it must heed the warnings
of the present and modify its cultural standpoint: it must reconvert a system of
production characterised by distortions against nature and against human beings
; it must satisfy aspirations towards health, to which we are all entitled. This
is why the environment and the body are the contemporary sites of conscience.
Proposal and objectives
- The conscious choice of ecological priorities and the consequent political decisions
- Transformation of inhabitants into active citizens who will become eco-consumers and producers of sustainable environmental conditions.
- Integration of migrant flows into a new sustainable geography.
Prevention: education, ethics and communication.
Prevention is a process running along two lines. The first line is collective: it
comprises issues connected with primary prevention affecting the environment and
life style; secondary prevention, which is connected with the health and scientific
systems; and care, which depends to a great extent on the efficiency of services
and the degree to which patients are able to gain access to leaders of scientific
research, who are called upon to “ sustain” illness in accordance with ethical principles
and a respect for the nature of the relations between biology, technology and humanity.
The other line is individual: it is connected with responsibility for oneself, awareness,
culture and the relationship with one’s own body. Sustainability in oncology must
entail uniting the two lines into a single line of action, the fundamental instruments
of which are education, ethics and communication. In the empty space between these
two lines certain unsustainable effects take root within the cancer system. These
include: the painful impact of the patient with the lack of suitable assistance
in the management of the disease outside the hospital; the lack of contact between
patient and doctor within the hospital system; the ethical conflict occasioned by
genetic tests on the risks of cancer; the persistence of geographical inequalities
in access to public health services.
Proposal and objectives
- The training of teachers in schools and universities with a view to introducing, and improving care-related vocational courses,
- Enhancement of living spaces such as houses, hospitals and cities as places of well-being and health.
- Application of lay values in ethical choices.
- Communication as a means of healing the process of division and separation.
Economics, medicine and survival.
How is it possible that the cost-benefit criteria of commerce should determine the
public management of health? How can we implement primary prevention, something
of vital importance in the fight against cancer, if the criteria of economic calculation
clash with those of democracy and equality? The introduction into the market and
the use in clinical practice of new cancer drugs – efficacious but expensive – on
the one hand have increased the chances of curing cancer but on the other hand they
have created problems of access to therapy because of budget restraints imposed
upon hospitals which are run as business concerns. This is an unsustainable situation
both for the patient and for the oncologist who finds himself caught between two
conflicting obligations: he must give cancer patients the chance to be treated with
new “intelligent” drugs but at the same time he must not exceed limited financial
resources. . Amid this uncertainty the situation of elderly women is even more critical:
they are already excluded from expensive therapies because these are not cost-effective
when the expenses involved are set against the possible gains ( not socially useful)
in terms of survival. The improvement in cancer treatment has led to a greater number
of chronic cancer sufferers but the toxicity of the drugs has worsened the quality
of life, and made it necessary to improve social assistance and achieve a sustainable
degree of family participation. We are approaching 2020, the year when the World
Health Organisation claims that cancer treatment will start to be no longer financially
viable.
Proposal and objectives
- Promotion of a balanced relationship between clinical research and the sustainability of treatment.
- An economic pact between the parties involved on the basis of sustainability criteria.
- A critical appraisal, on an ethical and a political plane, of the dominant models of social utility.
Theatre.
The theatre, an ancient art with a social function, is the most important “renewable
resource” which a community has at its disposal. The theatre has accompanied the
development of civilization, directing its language towards the most painful human
conflicts and the bitterest issues .The cathartic relationship between theatre performance
and audiences in classical Greece is an extraordinary heritage which still affects
the deepest of human feelings. The peculiarity of the theatre as well as other artistic
disciplines based on body language lies in the fact that by its very essence it
is, and always has been , directly related to our worldview. Consequently, drama
is able to ask the most urgent questions arising from contemporary reality about
the destiny of the human race. A project aiming to bring together the sick elements
of reality in a sustainable form of development must therefore recognise that its
centre lies in culture and art, a necessary point of departure if we are to reverse
the process of loss and the unsustainable weaknesses of present-day society.
Proposal and objectives
- Making optimum use of a culture directed towards environmental and social sustainability.
- Involvement of artists in the search for language capable of interpreting the oracular nature of our times.
Coordination:The Amazon Centre, Palermo
Technical and Scientific Committee: Anna Barbera, Director of the
Amazon Project; Marida Bolognesi, Livorno Donna; Laura Corradi, Sociologist of Health
and the Environment, University of Calabria; Alessandra Gennari, Oncologist, National
Institute of Tumours, Genoa; Isabella Mezza, Journalist in Italian State Radio and
Television, Rome; Paola Muti, Director of the National Scientific Institute, Regina
Elena, Roma; Lina Prosa, Director of the Amazon Project; Adele Traina, Biologist,
Breast Cancer Register – ARNAS, Ospedale Civico, Oncology Hospital, M.Ascoli, Palermo.
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