Professor Robert Burioni, full professor of microbiology and virology at the San Raffaele hospital in Milan, until 4 years ago he quietly led his life as a virologist and university professor, dividing his time between teaching, research and patient care.
That all changed after writing a few post on Facebook, in which he criticized the bad information that was made on social media about vaccines, railing against those who questioned their effectiveness and feared their danger. The audience of his followers has increased exponentially, divided like a stadium crowd between those who appreciated him for his scientific dissemination work and those who, on the so-called "no vax" front, accused him of lying about the alleged dangers of vaccines.
Today Burioni is one of the most prominent personalities of the academic world on the web, has written three books on the subject of vaccines and correct scientific information, regularly participates in conferences and broadcasts where he continues his dissemination work. The criticisms against him have not diminished. There are those who threaten him, those who publish satirical cartoons about him (the ones you see in these pages have been collected by himself), those who accuse him of colluding with pharmaceutical companies: in the middle there is all the worst of information that travels on social media, conspiracy theories, insults, anti-scientific positions and accusations of protagonism.
We interviewed Professor Burioni with the aim of making a handbook of his thinking, starting exclusively from scientific bases, trying to understand what are also the social reasons that lead to rooting for and against vaccination and taking stock of the situation, summarizing the major news spread on the internet on this issue, also with the help of a tutorial which explores all the medical-scientific aspects.
One of the accusations made against her is that her fervor is dictated by economic reasons. Are you paid directly or indirectly by those who produce vaccines?
"No. I have, it is true, a conflict of interest with vaccinations, because I have developed several alternative drugs to vaccines for which it would be better to say that vaccines don't work. Because if tomorrow it turns out that one of the vaccines we use is no longer good, a working and potentially profitable space would open up for me. I have a conflict of interest, which in this case is the other way around."
You said that science is not democratic, yet the scientific method is something extremely democratic, the data are public and for everyone: to say that it is not democratic doesn't mean defending an elite and not letting information reach people?
«When I say that science is not democratic I launch a slogan, which should not be taken literally. It's a bit like saying "proletarians of the whole world unite", it's not that you have to literally chain all the proletarians of the whole world. Science is not democratic it simply means that in the scientific field we argue with data, and not with opinions. In other words 2+2 equals four. Even if everyone votes that it gets 5, it keeps getting 4, until someone proves that it gets 5. Science is an extremely democratic and shared process because science has no dogmas, and everything can be doubted, everything can be questioned. But all of this must have a limit, it's not like we can question the fact that the sun will rise the next day and maybe for this reason not get ready to go to work. In the same way, the new truths that come from science are not brought by scoundrels on Twitter, but by people like me who use the scientific method. It is science correcting itself.
Is it true that you don't accept comparisons with anti-vaccines? Why?
"It is true. How can I have a comparison with those who do not accept the scientific method? I have daily discussions with my colleagues, I regularly attend the conferences of virologists, immunologists and infectious disease specialists where we compare, recognizing the scientific method, our data and our opinions. Because you can have an opinion about something, but not whether the earth is flat or whether vaccines cause autism. If I had to confront an anti-vaccinist who would decide who is right? The people with televoting? It clearly doesn't work that way. If someone has data to present that says vaccines are bad or vaccines don't work, they can come to the national conference of the Italian society of virology and share this data with scientists instead of scared parents.
Could it not be that today among the anti-vaccine advocates there is a new genius who has made a sensational discovery and that official science rejects a priori?
"Everything is possible. But considering the mastery of Italian that these gentlemen have, I consider it very unlikely. They say that vaccines are not harmless but they almost always write “harmless” with a “q”… ».
What exactly is the pact signed with Grillo?
«The pact, which was promoted by my colleague and friend Guido Silvestri, a professor in Atlanta, and by me, and which was then signed by Grillo, Renzi and many Italian citizens, is simply an attempt to agree on the rules of the game . We can discuss everything. I am a football fan, there is a lot of discussion about football matches, but no one questions that we should play 11 against 11 and that matches must last 90 minutes or that whoever scores the most goals wins. Here is our attempt: we discuss everything, but we establish the rules of the game. Science cannot be thrown overboard, science must be the element on which our discussion must be based. We can discuss whether vaccines should be mandatory, we can discuss whether they should be free but we cannot discuss whether vaccines cause autism, because they don't."
Many vaccines are paid for, the accusation of no vax is that the State agrees with the pharmaceutical companies to share the profits by favoring their use.
"Vaccines generate profits but the overall turnover of vaccines is very low, in 2015 all vaccines combined had a value equal to 1,4% of total health expenditure".
The Italian State, over the years, has recognized substantial compensation to subjects damaged by irreversible complications due to compulsory vaccinations and transfusions. So does the state recognize the possibility that vaccines are dangerous?
«There are judgments that have stated that vaccines cause autism, but I'm a doctor I'm not a judge, so I can't help but repeat: 2+2 equals 4 even if a court says it equals 5. Having said that this I do not comment on the sentences. Science says vaccines are harmless. And that least of all cause or favor autism ».
