When Judging Is Shaping
When a thirteen-year-old commits a serious crime, public debate asks: monster or child to save? A neurobiological and philosophical reflection on why this dichotomy is ill-posed—and what it means for juvenile justice to accept that judgment itself is a form of intervention.
When Observing Is Intervening
No observation is neutral. From Heisenberg's physics to informed consent, a reflection on the interventional character of every act of knowing—and its ethical consequences for clinical practice.
The Good of the Many and the Dignity of the Few
On why informed consent is not a technical formality but the first test of ethical legitimacy whenever the common good is invoked to justify burdens on the few.
Three Structural Decisions the Italian Health Service Has Deferred for Twenty Years
The Italian SSN delivers excellent average outcomes and rapidly deteriorating equitable access. The paradox is not a funding problem. It is a design problem — and the design choices are knowable. An editorial introducing the full policy paper (PDF)
When the Brain Is No Longer in the Courtroom
A physician's reading of Italy's Roggero case: what Sapolsky's neurobiology of acute stress can illuminate about a moment that lasted sixty seconds, and the honest limits of what science can tell a courtroom.
Italy’s Medical-School Admissions Row Is Arguing About the Wrong Thing
Italy is arguing over whether the new medical-school "filter semester" was too hard. A practising clinician argues this is the wrong argument. The real question is what kind of doctor we are trying to select, and with what instruments.
The Trevallion Case and the Two Separations
Why removing a child from an environment is not the same legal act as separating that child from a parent — and why conflating them matters. A reading of the Italian "family in the woods" case in the frame of proportionality, evidence and harm.
The physician's aura is not vanishing. It is moving.
A response to John Lantos's JAMA Perspective on AI and medicine — on why the physician's aura is being redistributed rather than lost