Leonardo Da Vinci, the inventor of the modern bike.

Leonardo Da Vinci was certainly the first to have sketched a modern looking and working bicycle, which, by the way, it is still the most energy efficient machine ever created by man.
We find Leonardo’s sketch in the Atlantic Codex (133v) kept at the Ambrosiana Library in Milan. It has been drawn with carbon pencil around 1493 (we may date it because of its position).
Now, did this sketch had any influence on the creation of modern bikes? No, not at all, for the simple reason that it has not been seen from the end of the XVI century up to a few decades ago, and here is the story of this sketch.

Most of Leonardo Da Vinci papers were left to one of his disciples, Francesco Melzi, who moved them back from Amboise, France, to Milan around 1520 but after Melzi’s death, his son Orazio did not care about them, finally selling to the sculptor Pompeo Leoni who, acting like a new Attila the Hun, took them to Spain and then, using scissors and glue, cut and pasted a great part of those leaves.
The Atlantic codex (so called because of the large leaves, normally used for atlases) was then taken back to Milan and donated by Count Arconati to the Ambrosiana library. It was stolen by Napoleon in 1796 and taken to Paris, but on Napoleon’s downfall, it was moved back to Milan by Canova

In need of some restorations, in 1966 it was given to the monks of the Laboratorio di Restauro of Grottaferrata. During their work, they opened two leaves which were glued together to hide some erotic sketches, which Leonardo seemed to fancy a lot sketching, and there, lo and behold! they saw the bike…
An expert on Leonardo was called, Augusto Marinoni, who then published his finding in his 1972’s book: “The Unknown Leonardo.“
He attributed this sketch not to Leonardo himself – being not in the usual fine hand of the Master – but to one of his disciple, possibly Gian Giacomo Caprotti, known as Salaì, who may have copied an original by Leonardo. Or, we may add here, a wooden prototype built by Leonardo.

Marinoni’s announcement caused him a lot of troubles, with some of his colleagues accusing him of being a cheat and have done it himself. The most virulent accusation came from Hans-Erhard Lessing, curator of the “Landesmuseum für Technik und Arbeit” di Mannheim, but later he was proven wrong.  If it is a modern fake, then the culprit should be a monk of Grottaferrata, but if he wanted to fake it, then, why not use something like a modern bike, with a chain?

In our humble opinion the authenticity of the sketch still stands, being accepted also by most of Leonardo’s experts, like Carlo Pedretti, Martin Kemp and Alessandro Vezzosi.

 

Macau lose a illustrious resident: two amazons kill Kim Jong-nam (김정남) in KL.

Macau has lost one his most famous resident. Kim Jong-nam (김정남) Born on 10 May 1971 in Pyongyang, North Korea died apparently poisoned by two North Korean female “Amazons” he was born on 13 February 2017 in Sepang Malaysia.
He was the son of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il and was the brother of Kim Jong-un. He leaves behind 3 children.
He has been leaving in exile in Macau, Singapore and Malaysia trying to escape from his murderous half brother.
He was described as “hot-tempered, sensitive, and gifted in the arts.” He loved films.

In my latest book The Dew of Heaven set in Macau and Hong Kong there are 2 female agents ‘nicknamed’ the Amazons which do play an important part in it. This is the third truth-twist I am experiencing, where reality seems to catch up with fiction…

Kim Jong-nam paid several visits in disguise to Tokyo red light distric but in May 2001, he was arrested on arrival at Narita International Airport accompanied by two women and a four-year-old boy identified as his son. He was traveling on a forged Dominican Republic passport using a Chinese alias, Pang Xiong, which means “fat bear” in Mandarin.
Until the Tokyo incident, Kim was expected to be the next leader of the Country after his father. In February 2003, some signals were intercepted in South Korea indicating that he was being replaced and it is believed that Kim Jong-un became the new heir apparent due to this particular incident which did embarrass his late father, by late 2003 he was spotted several times in Macau.
Kim says he fell out of favour because he had become an advocate for reform after being educated in Switzerland, leading his father to decide that he had turned “into a capitalist”.
Kim Jong-nam had been living incognito with his family in Macau, for more than three years, and this was a cause of some embarrassment to both the Macanese and Chinese governments, since he was carrying a Portuguese passport, perhaps fake, and he had 2 wives and one mistress living with him while spending lavishing on gambling, prostitution, drinks and food.
In June 2010, Kim Jong-nam gave a brief interview to the Associated Press in Macau while waiting for a hotel elevator. He told the reporter that he had “no plans” to defect to Europe, as the press had recently rumoured, until 2007 he was living in an apartment on the southern tip of Macau’s Coloane Island.

After the death of his uncle, Jiang Song Thaek and aunt, Kim Kyong-Hui, in Korea he was described as a dead man walking but not to enrage China the two killer “Amazons” had to wait and carry out their evil task outside Macau.

 

The socha of Leonardo Da Vinci

On 23 April 1519, the 67 years old Leonardo Da Vinci decided to draw up his testament. He had a strong feeling that his life was slipping away from him, since he had been very sick for months and more than one year earlier he had suffered a stroke, which had impaired the use of his right hand. He called a French notary working at Amboise, Guillaume Boreau, to record his last will before witnesses. The document starts with the usual formula used for those documents: “Considering nothing to be more certain than death and nothing more uncertain than the hour…”
It is a long and meticulous list, containing instructions on where to bury his body, how to organize his funeral and how to distribute his properties. There is no mention of the Mona Lisa and the other pictures he had been keeping in his studio at Cloux, possibly because he had already donated them to his beloved disciple, Giacomo Caprotti from Oreno, known as Salai, who had quickly resold them to King Francis I, getting a huge sum as payment.

There is small clause in his testament, a very minor one, which had puzzled his biographers, a donation to a French lady servant working for Leonardo, called Mathurine, who Leonardo mentions in his last will,

…dona a Maturina sua fantesche una veste de bon pan negro foderata de pelle, una socha de panno et doy ducati per una volta solamente pagati: et ciò in remuneratione similmente de boni servitii ha lui facta epsa Maturina de qui inanzi.

Here is the English translation,

he donates to Mathurine, his servant, a dress of good black cloth lined with leather, a socha of fabric and two ducats paid in one go: and this as compensation for her good work made to him from now on.

Possibly this lady took good care of him while he was laying sick in bed, and by giving her two gold ducats and some clothes he wanted to thank her for the trouble, further to paying her a salary.

But what is that socha mentioned by Leonardo? It is not in the Italian vocabulary and has since puzzled his biographers. It is often translated as a woolen cloak, as Serge Bramly do.

But in reality, socha in the Milanese dialect stands for a lady skirt, and it is often used to our days as plural ‘i socks’ the skirts, as I myself remember my parents using that term.

This is a sign that the years Leonardo spent in Milan, surrounded by his Milanese disciples, like Salai and Melzi, had somehow enriched his Florentine vocabulary.

 

Jackals travelling on MTR trains

A 60-year-old man with suicidal intentions created havoc at the Tsim Sha Tsui MTR station at busy hour, Friday night the 10th of February, leaving 18 people injured, four of whom are in critical conditions.

According to a preliminary investigation by the HK police, the suspect arsonist poured flammable liquid onto himself and others before setting it alight. He had started the blaze aboard the first compartment of the Tsuen Wan line train as it crossed from Tsim Sha Tsui to Admiralty at 9.12am. He used newspapers, a lighter and a bottle of mineral turpentine, causing an explosion.

Close to the arsonist there was one of our friends, Luca, working for a large American organization in Hong Kong, who had received some medical training in Italy, serving for 6 years as a volunteer with the Red Cross. Luca told us that he was disconcerted and upset by the behavior of the public, seeing a lot of young people shooting photos and films with their phones, then posting them on the FB, instead of helping the wounded and the people who were trying to escape.
Then some journalists arrived and they also quickly set to shoot people, even to those down on the floor with burns, thus creating obstacles to the firemen and paramedics.

He told us: “Such behavior reminded me of jackals rather than human beings and it could not be justified by their duty to report facts. The Police should not allow them to shoot close ups of people laying down in pain with burns – including the suspect – because in so doing they are adding nothing to the facts, but just want to made a show of it.”

While getting out of the MTR Luca received hundreds of What’s ups and SMS by friends and colleagues, who had seen him moving giving first aid to the wounded and were worried that he might also have been hurt. The police should make clear to the people that such behavior will not be tolerated because not only create obstacles to the responders but constitutes a breach of the privacy for people affected and not wishing to appear in FB or Instagram.

 

A Biography of Wei Hsioh-Ren (1899-1987). Scientist, Educator, Diplomat.

Our friend Betty Peh-T’i Wei had been pondering about writing a biography of her late father, Wei Hsioh-Ren, for quite some time. Betty’s mother, Yin Bao Liu Wei, before her death in 1991, made her daughter promise that she will write a book about the life of her father, but Betty, an historian by training, had to gather all the necessary data which were scattered in files and in the memory and friends and relatives, before starting to write it. Admittedly, not an easy task for her but after years of research and hard work she has finally fulfilled her promise by pulling together all the data, photos and notes, giving the final imprimatur to an edition in Chinese and English of her father’s main achievements in life, under the title of: A Chronological Biography. Remembering my father Wei Hsioh-Ren (1899-1987): scientist, educator, and diplomat.

Betty starts by tracing her family’s beginning with the illustrious mythological pater familias of the Wei clan, Biwan, who achieved the title of Marquis of Wei in 661 BCE and then moving fast forward to the XIX century.
Betty’s father, Wei Hsioh-Ren, was born into a middle-class family of artisans in Nanjing, and even if he did experienced a great shock very early in life, at 3, when his father passed away, his bright intelligence and application made him a model student since elementary school, excelling in mathematics and sciences. He had a bright scholastic career which culminated in 1928 at the University of Chicago, where he was awarded a doctorate in nuclear physics, discussing his thesis with two Nobel prizes laureates, Albert A. Michelson and Arthur H. Compton. Paradoxically the money to pay for his scholarship was coming from the returned indemnity paid by the Qing government to the United States and Great Britain as a compensation for the Boxer insurgency of the year 1900. The two nations in 1909 had nobly decided to return it back the new China which was taking shape, in order to spur its modernization.
Then, turning down offers to remain in Chicago and wanting to contribute to the progress of the motherland, Hsioh-Ren returned to China in 1929, establishing the College of Science at the University of Nanjing, because he wanted to see China progressing in the scientific and social field, and stop of being the sick man of Asia. He had brought back to China with him hundreds of documentaries on film which were then used as teaching material, even producing one himself: ‘The Farmer in Spring’ which in 1936 won the first prize at the first International film competition of China and then was also the first scientist in the world to film a total solar eclipse.

A dark cloud hovered over China during the Sino-Japanese war (1937-1945) but Hsioh-Ren doggedly refused to leave the Country, as he may have done. He set up his home in Chongqing and tried his best to help the common folks, teaching and working out some practical solutions to solve their problems. He patented a new type of wet cell battery which was put into production and, under continuous Japanese bombings, he worked at the electrifications of some nearby villages.
In 1945, at the end of the conflict, he was sent to New York, at the United Nations, as a member of the atomic commission which then proceeded to set up the International Atomic Energy Agency, headquartered in Vienna.
Unfortunately his tenure become troublesome starting from 1950 because of a strong pressure coming from the Soviet Union, as they wanted the Republic of China excluded from the United Nations, leaving the place to the newly founded P.R.C. The Soviet representative Jacob Malik tried hard to have Hsioh-Ren unseated, since in his own words, he was: ‘representing a government which no longer exists’ but he failed and he then stomped out of the assembly in a fit of rage. This is a story which was widely reported and commented in the American press.
Then, from 1954 onward, he worked at proposals for international nuclear disarmament, but finally in 1963 the pressure from communist China to occupy his place at the United Nations became unbearable and he decides to quit it, accepting the appointment of “Distinguished Professor of Physics and International Affairs” at Bethany University, in West Virginia, where he taught until 1972. Finally retiring in Honolulu, he died less than a month short of his 88th birthday.
According to Betty, her father had a full and happy life, blessed by many achievements and leaving behind a loving and united family. His only regrets were probably three: not having visited Jerusalem, not having visited Los Alamos and not having returned to Nanjing for a last time to bid farewell to his old friends and relatives, which had been left behind.

This book is the moving tribute of an intelligent daughter to the greatness of her parents, although reading it leave us with the unfulfilled desire of knowing more and with the lingering hope that this is just the beginning, not the end. Notwithstanding that, here we are dealing with a very important biographical chronology which perhaps one day – when the Republic of China and the People’s Republic of China will cease to exist by merging into a single entity, called China – a new generation of historians will use it for writing a complete biography of such a great man.

 

The Neanderthal inside us.

Modern genetics seems to have solved an old riddle which had troubled anthropologists for decades. Did our Homo sapiens ancestors had sex with Neanderthals? The answer is yes, and quite a lot. According to investigations conducted by John Anthony Capra, 35, professor of evolutionary genomics at the Vanderbilt University.

Capra’s comparative studies on DNA have demonstrated that roughly 1 to 5 of modern Eurasians as well as Asian people do possess Neanderthal traits in their genomes.
Professor Capra says that when our ancestors migrated from Africa, rightly 50.000 years ago, with the ancestors of modern Chinese turning right and the ancestors of modern Europeans turning left, some mating with Neanderthals did occur, right before their slow genocide. This fact can be easily verified by looking at African DNA which do not possess any Neanderthals genome.

The Neanderthals were surely stronger (more muscular and tall) and smarter (larger brains) than our ancestors but they had a weak point: they were loners, while we did hunt in pack, like wolves.

This is not all. Professor Capra says that possessing Neanderthal DNA can be a curse for some people as well as a blessing, even if further research is needed.
To possess Neanderthal DNA has a bad influence on addition to alcohol and nicotine and carry more dangers on the formation of blood cloths. Furthermore it seems to increase enormously the predisposition of being depressed, about 1 over 2 people possessing Neanderthals genomic traits will go through depression soon or later in their lives.

On the positive side their genes helped greatly our ancestors to stand the freezing cold of continental Europe and the facility of the blood to form cloths was a blessing when healing wounds, a great advantage in a period of hardship and struggle, but a disadvantage today, exposing us to the danger of strokes and pregnancy complications.

A book by Guido Tonelli about the hunt of the Higgs Boson.

Guido Tonelli, born in 1950 in a small village perched in the mountains of Massa Carrara, is the author of an extraordinary book: The imperfect birth of things. The great race to discover God’s particle and the new physics which will change the World (La Nascita Imperfetta delle cose. La grande corsa alla particella di Dio e la nuova fisica che cambierà il mondo. Rizzoli, Milano, 2016).

Tonelli teaches Physics at the University of Pisa and besides being the recipient of several prestigious prizes – the Fundamental Physics Prize, the Enrico Fermi Prize and the medal from the President of Italy – was the leader of the team of scientists who discovered the Higgs boson at the CERN of Geneva, on the 8th of October, 2013. François Englert e Peter Higgs then received the Nobel Prize for Physics that year for their intuition. I met Guido Tonelli, together with his colleague and my fellow ‘turbighese’ Massimo Caccia, Franco Bedeschi and Catia Milardi – all brilliant physicists – in Hong Kong, just before the publication of his book and I was struck by his debonair politeness and good humor. Guido is the kind of person you would love to have as your neighbor, certainly he doesn’t look like an introvert Faustian character.

The research on the Higgs boson gathered speed at the CERN, in 1995, after a casual encounter between Tonelli and the Nobel Prize recipient Carlo Rubbia, formerly a CERN director, at the cafeteria of the center. Rubbia was curious about the program carried forward by Tonelli, Michel Della Negra and Jim Virdee and then invited him into his office to explain clearly what was cooking in the pot. Tonelli accepted the challenge, expecting a hellish hour with him, because of the well-known aggressive, take-no-prisoners, character of Rubbia. He was unable to convince him, as he concluded: “It will never work. You will create a huge hole in the water”. Later events demonstrated that, well, even Nobel Prize recipients may be wrong!

In 2008 the Lhc (Large hadron collider) was going to be switched on and a sort of mass hysteria took over the world (I was one of those people creating it – with a fiction, as well as anti-scientific, novel in the style of Angels & Demons – which was released in those days by Mursia of Milan) and, also because of it, Guido Tonelli received threatening emails. For that I am sorry but my humble opinion had always been that science is scientific only in men’s eyes not in absolute terms, and I love science-fiction novels of all kinds.

Tonelli writes that:

In the opinion of those people – A tiny black hole would be created during the first collisions and nobody will detect it. The small hungry monster will then swallow up all the matter and for a week nothing will happen, then, all in a sudden, with the increase of its mass the entire planet in a split second will be swallowed up, with lightings of a Biblical Armageddon -; In a normal world, no one would have taken them seriously, but the information society in which we live in, normal it is not.

Well, this represents a tidy sum up of my science-fiction novel, Black Hole…

The episode narrated by Tonelli in his book which I love most, because of its pathos, is presented under the title of ‘False alarms or epochal discoveries?’.
I remember to have read about it on the Washington Post while on holiday in Thailand with my wife, during the Easter of 2011.
Far away, Guido Tonelli and his family were packing for a long-scheduled holiday to Nice, France, after spending Christmas working at the CERN. But the well-deserved holiday was not going to materialize: he opened his email box and found hundreds of unexpected and unwelcomed messages, then journalists called asking for his comments, since all the papers of the world were already carrying articles about the discovery of the Higgs at the Atlas. The Lhc was divided in two experiments: Atlas and CMS (Compact Muon Solenoid), a general-purpose detector, headed by Tonelli. Although it has the same scientific goals as the ATLAS experiment, the CMS used different technical solutions and a different magnet-system design.
Guido Tonelli was forced to tell his wife that there will be no holidays and they had to unpack: just because somebody at the Atlas had let the cat out of the bag.
The leak had come from a group of researchers from Wisconsin, headed by  the Hongkonghese Sau Lan Wu, a capable and expert lady who had been a child prodigy: born in Hong Kong into a very poor family, she had won a prestigious scholarship solely because of her genius and incredible capacity to work and study hard. As a young researcher, she had been part of the team which discovered the Quark Charm with Sam Ting.
Like other researchers at the CERN she was convinced that some faint signals coming from the 115 GeV in the old machine were indication of the Higgs boson. She then based her elaborations on those signals to detect the Higgs. But as wise men say: “Torture the data long enough and they will confess to anything”.
The problem was essentially that she did not submit her findings to an independent panel for verification, a common scientific procedure,  somehow compulsory for such large cooperation. Suddenly the result went public and the bomb exploded.
At the CERN all the researchers jumped into action to see if really the Higgs is really decaying into two photons, as San Lau thought.
Vivek Sharma was recalled from San Diego and put to work, but then the cold shower came: on 25 April Fabiola Gianotti told the press that there were no Higgs there.
Guido Tonelli says that to be extra sure he went on with his facts-checking, ignoring the official version by Fabiola, thinking: what if San Lau is right and we are all wrong? But soon after he reached the same conclusion: San Lau had made a horrible mistake during her Easter Bump as it will become known.
They were all angry and nervous but then Sau Lan one evening came knocking at Guido Tonelli’s office, sat down in front of him and, while crying, she said she was sorry for her mistake.
Guido in turn felt sorry for her and told her to look forward not backward, knowing well that she will have to pay dearly for her mistake within the unforgiving scientific community.

I am writing this review in English and not in Italian because I think that this book should be translated and made available to the English speaking world. It is a great work, deserving more credit. The author takes the reader through the complex world of particle physics, mixing it with his personal life, while explaining complex concepts using plain words. It is an important book that all people interested in science and its influence on modern society should not miss.

 

To stop global warming, flood the deserts.

Global warming is causing havoc around the world and it is undeniable that average temperatures are rising. There is still disagreement on which the main factors causing such rise might be. CO2 emissions play certainly a role in creating the problem, but they seem to be only one of the factors. Therefore, CO2 reduction could not be the conclusive solution.

In our opinion, there is a way to limit the effects of Global Warming which is simple and highly feasible.
The solution is: let’s flood the Qattara Depression (Arabic: منخفض القطارة‎‎ Munḫafaḍ al-Qaṭṭārah) with salty water coming from the Mediterranean Sea and let the evaporation caused by the intense heat cool by a degree our planet.
If the effects are positives, similar measure could be applied to other parts of the Sahara Desert and other deserts around the world.

The Qattara Depression lies below sea level in a large plain scattered with salt pans, sand dunes and salt marshes. It has the lowest point in Africa at −133 metres below sea level, and covers 19,605 square kilometers, that is twice as large as Lebanon.

During World War II, the depression shaped the 1st and 2nd Battles of El Alamein, as it posed considerable obstacles to the advancements of armored vehicles. Axis and Allied forces built their defenses there and some of those defenses are still visible, including large minefields.

Several proposals had been tabled since 1917 to create a massive hydroelectric plant there. Such proposals are mostly based on the construction of a large tunnel, or channel, being excavated from the sea of 55 to 80 kilometers, depending on the route chosen to the Mediterranean Sea, to bring seawater into the area. Water would flow into a series of hydro-electric turbines which would generate electricity.
The very hot weather will create a massive cloud of evaporating water raising from the basin into the sky and, because of the evaporation, more water will flow into the depression, thus forming a constant source of energy. Eventually this would result in a massive deposit of salt which will be collected and used.

In the 1970s and early 1980s, several proposals to flood the area were made by Friedrich Bassler and his Joint Venture, Qattara, by a group of mainly German companies. They wanted to make use of peaceful nuclear explosions to build a tunnel, drastically reducing construction costs compared with conventional methods. This project proposed to use 213 devices, with yields of 1 to 1.5 megatons detonated at depths of 100 to 500 metres (330 to 1,640 ft). The Egyptian government, understandably, backed off on hearing about atomic weapons.
Scientists keep on putting forward other options but now we have a new urgency: such project should not be based on the production of electricity only. We must slow down global warming and stops desertification of large areas of our planet. Thus, the evaporating water will cause rainfall, which will cool down the air and threes and plants should be let grow freely, because of their capacity of absorbing CO2.

 

A Golden Book for a Silver Story

Peter Gordon & Juan J. Morales, The Silver Way. China, Spanish America and the Birth of Globalisation. 1565-1815, Random House, Penguin Books, Australia, 2017.

The authors of this aureus libellus – dealing with trade and exploration while dealing with an important chapter of globalization – are Juan José Morales and Peter Gordon, both of them long-time residents of Hong Kong.
In 97 short pages, they bring back to life a forgotten period of European expansion to the Far East: the Spanish contribution. Since Roman times, through the Silk Road, a painful drainage of precious metals had occurred: gold flew to India and silver to China, and in exchange we received spices, medicines, silk and porcelain. Several monetary crises in the West were caused by such hemorrhage of precious metals. Emperor Nero was the first to order the debasement of the minted coins to limit their drainage.

Miguel López de Lagaspi and Andrés de Urdaneta, the monk recalled to the sea by royal command, are the true heroes of this story. They did manage, in 1565, to establish a new sailing route from Manila to Mexico, transporting to the Philippines all the silver mined from the great Potosi mine in Bolivia. They used it to trade with Chinese who in exchange gave them all the goods which were mightily craved in the West.

We tend to study the story of European expansion following a Dutch and British narratives but this wonderful book force us to put down our usual reading glasses and put on new one of a different color.

 

Dentro il cervello senza dolore

Da anni ho l’onore e il piacere di conoscere Massimo Gerosa, un neurochirurgo conosciuto e stimato in tutto il mondo, essendo vicini di casa, a Verona.
Massimo ha da poco pubblicato un bel libro intitolato “Dentro il cervello senza dolore.”
Conosco alcune delle storie esposte in questo libro, letto oggi tutto d’un fiato, per averle sentite raccontate dall’autore: storie d’imbecillità burocratica, di frustrazioni e di delusioni. Ma vi si trovano esposti anche molti dettagli dei suoi brillanti successi professionali, che si son tradotti in vita – invece che morte – per migliaia dei suoi pazienti. Diamogli ora la parola:

Queste pagine sono state scritte per spiegare, soprattutto ai ‘non addetti ai lavori’, le conseguenze a cui un medico impegnato nella Sanità Pubblica del nostro Paese può incorrere a sua insaputa. Gran parte di questi problemi non son certo esclusivi dell’Italia, dato che si evidenziano, con un ritmo di accrescimento maggiore, in tutti quegli Stati di fragile ossatura politico-sociale in cui si tende a confondere il ruolo privato con il ruolo pubblico e l’interesse del singolo con quello della comunità.

Ecco qui delineato il dilemma che tocca risolvere a molti giovani all’inizio della propria carriera professionale. Ci si trova a un bivio: da una parte vanno i furbi, mentre quelli che seguono l’altra strada, gli onesti, gli apoti, gli inflessibili, vengono detti, come toccò a lui: ‘rompiscatole’ e “isterici attori di abili sceneggiate” finendo poi isolati, neutralizzati, irretiti come la farfalla finita nella tela del ragno.
Per i neurochirurghi è difficile parlare di fuga di cervelli, rischiamo di avvitarci in un calembour, eppure nel caso di Massimo Gerosa possiamo parlare di un cervello fuggito all’estero e poi rientrato, per nostra fortuna, per aiutare noi, la sua gente.
Tralascerò le interessanti note relativi alla sua famiglia: la nascita a Bellano sul lago di Como, il trasferimento a Verona, l’incontro con Laura, la sua affascinante moglie e collega, la nascita della figlia Alessandra, veniamo piuttosto alla sua attività di neurochirurgo che va oltre il tradizionale bisturi dei cerusici, verso le nuove tecniche antitumorali non invasive.

Nel 1980 Massimo si spostò al Brain Tumor Research Center dell’Università della California, a San Francisco, diretto da Charles Wilson e vi lavorò per due anni. Al termine del suo mandato, resisi conto del suo valore, gli americani gli chiesero di restare, ma il richiamo dell’Italia fu troppo forte e rifiutò. In un momento di sconforto mi confidò che quello è stato il più grande errore della sua vita. Tornato in Italia, si rese subito conto che la sua esperienza americana era un problema, non un vantaggio e fu per lui un trauma. Prima lavorò a Padova e quindi a Verona, presso all’ospedale di Borgo Trento. In seguito ebbe una nuova offerta di trasferirsi all’estero, in Belgio, ma di nuovo passò la mano, dopo sei mesi di permanenza.

Forse fu il rapporto personale – una comunanza di carattere e di aspirazioni – fra Massimo e il leggendario presidente della Banca Popolare di Verona, Giorgio Zanotto (1920-1999) che diede una svolta alla sua vita.

Nel 1989, un po’ fiaccato nell’entusiasmo iniziale, mi presentai una mattina di dicembre nell’ufficio di Giorgio Zanotto. Avevamo un appuntamento nella sede centrale della Banca Popolare di Verona, alle otto: lui era già lì e mi accolse con calore malgrado non sapesse nulla sullo scopo della visita e su ciò di cui mi occupavo. Mi fece accomodare e preparò personalmente un caffè. Poi, mentre posava la tazza sul tavolo, incrociammo gli sguardi e mi disse garbatamente: “Non so niente di lei. Prima di creare equivoci mi può spiegare cosa fa?”. Risposi che curavo i tumori al cervello e che cercavo di costruire nell’Ospedale di Verona una specifica unità che interveniva sul paziente con metodi non invasivi. Senza aspettare che finissi chiamò la sua segretaria, probabilmente per trascorse vicende personali, quasi a rimarcare la sensibilità a tale argomento
“Mi dica cosa possiamo fare per lei” continuò Zanotto.

Gli finanziò l’acquisto di un casco stereotassico del costo di 120 milioni di lire. Non solo ma in seguito lo aiutò a installare la Gamma Knife, il secondo impianto in Italia dopo quello, assai sottoutilizzato, al CTO di Roma. Zanotto anche questa volta approvò e gli disse: “Se lei è convinto che sull’acquisto di questa macchina bisogna andare sino in fondo…” Quella costava quasi quattro miliardi di lire. Non appena istallata, la Gamma Knife fu posta all’opera a pieno regime. Poi per protestare contro i fannulloni e i burocrati politicizzati che giravano per l’ospedale, Massimo mise dei cartelli con l’avviso di Facite Ammuina l’apocrifo articolo 23 del regolamento della marina borbonica che ordinava, in certe condizioni, di muoversi da poppa a prua e viceversa, invece che lavorare. Coloro che si sentirono chiamati in causa levarono gli scudi!
Ciò non bastò a dissuaderlo dall’attaccare nuovamente il cialtronismo dilagante, e osò spostare la polemica a livello internazionale: spedì una lettera alla prestigiosa rivista britannica The Lancet fondata nel 1823, che dopo le opportune verifiche la pubblicò.
In quella lettera Massimo protestava per l’ingiustizia nella assegnazione delle cattedre in Italia e raccontava di aver concorso alla cattedra di neurochirurgia a Sassari, in Sardegna, e che, nonostante il suo punteggio per produzione scientifica fosse pari a 101,2 punti, a lui vennero anteposti due candidati, il primo con un punteggio di 0.66 e il secondo di 9.38.

Gli ultimi successi di Massimo risalgono al 2007 con l’istallazione di una versione aggiornata della Gamma Knife, nota come Perfexion; al 2008 con il Neuronavigatore e infine, nel 2010, il sistema Extended che portò l’ospedale di Verona a diventare l’eccellenza italiana nel campo della cura dei tumori al cervello.
Ci fermiamo qui. Non vogliamo rivelare altro, lasciando ai lettori il piacere di scoprire i dettagli del percorso umano e professionale di un medico geniale, pio e giusto. Ci chiediamo spesso come possa l’Italia continuare a galleggiare, nonostante gli scandali e gli sprechi, ebbene la risposta è sotto ai nostri occhi, basta sfogliare questo libro. Il merito va a uomini come Massimo Gerosa.

Massimo Gerosa (con Claudio Ruggiero) Dentro il Cervello Senza Dolore. Storia di un’avanguardia tecnologica nella sanità pubblica tra sfide, coraggio e coerenza. Presentazione di Alessandro Olivi. Contributo di Carlo Mazza. Santarcangelo di Romagna, Maggioli Editore, € 30.
ISBN 9 788891 617804