Tita Repetto, the forty-year-old from Chiavari who died following the removal of a mole which revealed a melanoma. She was not plagiarized. These are the reasons of the Court of Appeal which acquitted Paolo Bendinelli, founder of the Borzonasca Anhydra Centre. She was the woman who made most of her decisions about her health, including having a mole removed without anesthesia by Paolo Oneda and treating the consequences that would lead to her death with alternative therapies and meditations.
For the judges Roberta Repetto “She was an adult woman, fully capable of deciding whether or not to consult doctors in case of doubts about her health condition. She calmly carried out her work outside the Anidra Center and cooperated with the Centre’s activities in the remaining time. Except for the last days of September 2020, Roberta Repetto has always been able to move independently. She could have gone to the emergency room or another healthcare facility; if she felt she couldn’t move, nothing could have stopped her from asking for an ambulance to be sent to take her to hospital with a simple phone call. It is therefore very possible that Roberta Repetto has freely oriented herself towards the option of a markedly naturist lifestyle, with accentuated reluctance towards the treatments of traditional medicine”.
As for Paolo Oneda who operated on Repetto at the woman’s request. He should have refused to intervene on a kitchen table and above all not performed the histological examination. The judges say: “Unlike a diagnostic test carried out directly on the patient, for example by taking a fragment of tissue or cells to ascertain its nature – a test which the patient undoubtedly has the right to refuse – once, as requested by the patient, the flap of skin is separated from her body, this finding for which ethical standards and good practices require histological examination for diagnostic purposes, without the need for further consent. Everything suggests that Roberta Repetto was not informed, at least not in a complete and understandable way for her, about the importance of the histological examination and the possible consequences. Roberta Repetto was a convinced naturist, firmly convinced of the goodness of natural remedies and used to refuse traditional health treatments”.
Bendinelli and Oneda (the first on the right and the second on the left in the photo) were sentenced to 3 years and 4 months at first instance.
