Gasparri, the "abortion pill" and the Inquisition.

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By a week the RU486 or the "abortion pill", is commercially available. Can be administered only in hospitals and up to quarantanovesimo days of pregnancy. This decision by a majority dell'AIFA (Agenzia Italiana del Farmaco).
The controversy does not calm down. After the threat of excommunication by the Vatican [1], Maurizio Gasparri to raise doubts about the appropriateness of its use. In particular, the Senator of the PDL supports the need for a hearing of the Parliament about the effect of the drug in Italy and in countries where it was previously adopted. This because "it can not be delegated to technicians without democratic legitimacy a decision that the right to life" [2].
It is worth to say a few words on the reasoning that suggests Senator Gasparri.
1. You do not need a hearing of the Italian Parliament on the effectiveness of the drug, nor in Italy nor in the rest of the countries that have adopted. In the first case, in fact, the figures are these: 4000 interventions, of which 5.5% of the cases, women have had to resort to surgical abortion, 23% had experienced pain, 13% nausea, 5% and diarrhea the 0.007% had to undergo a transfusion. The data is updated to 19 February 2009 and relate, remember, a trial of the drug [3]. Regarding the efficiency in the rest of the world, refer to my previous post, which gives the figures reported by the World Health Organization (WHO) [4].
Where the need for a hearing? The results may be controversial to the point of forcing the Parliament to doubt that a positive trend during the trial in Italy and from 1988 to today in the rest of the world is to be reversed? The results are not in dispute: in the vast majority of cases the drug is effective and has no contraindications. Unless Gasparri does not consider that Parliament is not only more important dell'AIFA (guilty, he said, "not to be legitimized by the people") but of the WHO.
2nd Discussed the merits of the proposal, we try now to assess their recruitment background. Gasparri proceed from the premise that the effectiveness of a drug should be evaluated according to the majority: the drug is effective that the majority of citizens (or rather, that the parliamentary representatives of the majority of citizens) considers effective. Would not otherwise explain the lamentation about the "lack of democratic legitimacy" of the "technical" members to make the necessary controls.
We try to evaluate the goodness of this premise using the famous dispute between the Galilean-Copernican heliocentric and geocentric Ptolemaic. According to Gasparri, the Sun still rotate around the Earth. Indeed, such meters should have taken the Church of Rome to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed heliocentric Galileo? Democratic legitimacy, or the vote of the majority. I doubt that in the seventeenth century the majority of the people negotiate for Galileo. So the "hearing" of the Holy Office would have certainly led to the rejection dell'eliocentrismo.
This happens when you use a political criterion (the majority) to assess the scientific data (the effectiveness of a drug), which fortunately does not need any legitimacy of the majority: the scientific legitimacy may be in perfect solitude, or in an overwhelming minority, as in the case of Galileo. Therefore unnecessary to fill the mouth of demagoguery, Senator Gasparri: science and democracy, using different criteria, like it or not the voters.
Nobody wants to be clear, to have their own opinion on the ethical policy of the "abortion pill" to Gasparri as to anyone else. The call is simply not to confuse this with a view of science.
Never be someone who ends up confusing Senator Gasparri with the new Inquisitor.
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