Prosecutors on Monday asked for two
years in jail on attempted fraud charges against Davide Vannoni,
the creator of a banned medical treatment called Stamina.
Giancarlo Avenati Bassi said Vannoni, president of the
Stamina Foundation, tried to defraud the northern Piedmont
regional health agency of 500,000 euros with his project.
Public health-care money was advanced for research projects
involving Stamina, a type of stem-cell treatment that scientists
have condemned as lacking any foundation or merit, but the money
was later withdrawn, the prosecution said.
It alleges the entire project was intended only to make
Vannoni and his colleagues rich.
However, the defence denied that and said no crime had
occurred - but if it had, the charges have taken too long to
bring to court under a statute of limitations.
Liborio Cataliotti, one of the lawyers for Vannoni, said
the most recent alleged offence occurred on September 14, 2007
and therefore had exceeded what he said was a 7.5 year limit for
such offences.
He added Vannoni remains "convinced that Stamina treatment
ultimately resulted in cases of healing that were real".
Last month, a Turin judge called the Stamina stem cell
treatment, now banned in Italy, "an enormous scientific fraud".
Judge Potito Giorgio made the comment in explaining his
earlier sentence in a related case.
"The activity has always been conducted outside current
regulations," the judge wrote.
He had earlier sentenced Carlo Tomino to six months in jail
and Marcello La Rosa to two years imprisonment.
La Rosa is a former associate of Vannoni.
Also last month, Italy's supreme Cassation Court said the
Stamina treatment "has no scientific validity".
The high court also said it deemed the procedure risky
because it involved "extracting and re-inoculating stem
cells...without the necessary precautions and without following
procedures as required by law".
The court issued its ruling setting out why it had rejected
a petition from Vannoni who wanted seized Stamina-related
materials returned to him.
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