Prosecutors seek two years for Stamina

(ANSA) - Turin, July 6 - 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type of stem-cell treatment that scientists have condemned as lacking any foundation or merit, but the money was later withdrawn, the prosecution said.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.