Diritto all’oblio

What is the “right to oncological oblivion”

At the end of June, the Senate Justice Commission began examining a bill on the “right to cancer oblivion”, which would allow people who have recovered from cancer not to provide information on their previous illness in certain circumstance in which it is currently require. If the proposal becomes law – and at this moment it is very difficult to say.

Given the crisis that led to the fall of the government led by Mario Draghi – it will help to at least partially reduce the inconvenience that people who have recovered from cancer often have to face, to which may happen to not obtain a mortgage, an insurance policy or not being able to proceed with the adoption procedures precisely because of their illness, even if they finished medical treatment years earlier.

Also read: cos è il diritto all oblio

Oncological Oblivion

It is a concept that is define as the right to oncological oblivion on the cast of the right to digital oblivion : the right, that is, to make less accessible or hide online – after a certain period of time – true news but that can damage honor or activity personal and professional background of a person, such as his or her legal history. The promoters of the law ask that something similar be guarantee even to those who have been ill with cancer but have now been cure for at least ten year.

Presented in February in the Senate and its first signatory is Paola Bodine, senator of the Democratic Party and vice president of the Health Commission. As Bodine explained, in Italy 3.6 million people are living with a diagnosis of cancer, of which about one million have recovered, often after courses that involve long, complex and painful interventions and therapies.

Various Organization

The problem is that those who want to apply for a loan or insurance are often force to provide information on their state of health, use by bank and insurance company to estimate the customer’s life expectancy and assess the level of risk of the loan or the policy. The result is that in very many cases, after a healing, these request are reject cos’è il diritto all’oblio.

It is not easy to accurately estimate the number of people who have been denied funding or services due to their past illness. Various organizations dealing with cancer patients, such as the AIOM Foundation (Italian Association of Medical Oncology) and the abracadabra association , which specifically supports people with mutations in the BRCA1 and 2 genes.

Right To Resume

They said they frequently receive testimonies and reports of this type. For example, the abracadabra association, located in the province of Milan, has received about a hundred, “but the numbers are certainly much higher”.

For many healed people and for the associations that deal with the issue it is a form of discrimination , which according to Bodine does not only concern the right to resume ” a normal life “, but also that of forming a family through adoption.

Also read: cos’è diritto oblio