Giuseppe Conte, the law professor
proposed as Italy's next premier, in 2013 acted as lawyer for a
girl who became the symbol of the unfounded Stamina stem-cell
treatment, a treatment eventually ruled dangerous, the girl's
family said.
"He helped us without asking a fee," said the family of Sofia
Barros, the so-called 'butterfly girl' who eventually died of a
terminal degenerative disease that first paralysed and blinded
her.
A year ago four people were sentenced to two years each in
jail for using the discredited Stamina stem-cell method of
disgraced doctor Davide Vannoni in Brescia hospitals.
In April last year Vannoni was detained by Carabinieri police
in relation to a new probe into his discredited treatment.
Vannoni is under investigation in Turin for alleged criminal
association.
In October 2015 a Turin judge ruled that the statute of
limitations had been exceeded in the fraud case against Vannoni,
president of the Stamina Foundation, who was accused of trying
to defraud the northern Piedmont regional health agency of
500,000 euros with his project.
In June 2015, a Turin judge called the Stamina stem cell
treatment, invented by Vannoni and now banned in Italy, "an
enormous scientific fraud", and Italy's supreme Cassation Court
said the Stamina treatment "has no scientific validity".
Conte, 54, a top civil lawyer and academic, has been put
forward as possible premier by the anti-establishment 5-Star
Movement (M5S), which has sometimes espoused 'no vax' stances,
and the anti-migrant Euroskeptic League, in their proposed new
government.
President Sergio Mattarella has taken time out to consider
the nomination of Conte as well as a proposed government team
and a government contract between the M5S and League.
photo: Vannoni
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