Giovanni Berlinguer

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A eulogy published on Science Network (Scienza in rete) after the death of Giovanni Berlinguer describes him as a “doctor and hygienist by training, politician by conviction, and humanist by nature,” and as someone who “always confronted the dramatic realities of life: illness, death, war, unemployment, and deprivation.”1

Berlinguer chose to pursue a career in academic medicine, but the explanation he gave as to why he had become a politician implied that choice had had little to do with it: politics ran in the blood, starting with his grandfather Enrico, he said.

His father Mario and cousins Luigi and Sergio followed in Enrico’s footsteps, while his elder brother, Enrico junior, led the Italian Communist Party for 12 years until his death in 1984. “Everyone was involved in politics. What else could I have done? Stay cooped up at home?” he once proclaimed.

Berlinguer’s political beliefs were rooted in Marxist philosophy. He first made a name for himself as the president of the International Union of Students from 1949 to 1953. He presided over more than 100 affiliated organisations with more than 5 million members—not all of them communist—against the backdrop of the cold war. He was elected to the Italian Chamber of Deputies in 1972 and subsequently to the Senate of the Republic in 1983 for the Italian Communist Party, where he drove through a string of health, social, and welfare reforms—including the closure of mental health asylums in Italy—during his period in office, which ended in 1992.

Most notably, Berlinguer spearheaded his country’s first national health plan (Servizio Sanitario Nazionale). In 1978 universal coverage funded by taxation replaced disjointed healthcare services governed by a fragmented and inequitable insurance system.

Berlinguer was also one of the founders of Legambiente, Italy’s leading environmental organisation. As a member of the European Parliament in Strasbourg—an office he held from 2004 until 2009—he advanced important proposals on climate change and served on the commission on environment and health, as well as the commission on culture, education, and information.

The Italian president, Sergio Mattarella, described Berlinguer as a man of shining integrity and character. “A highly respected doctor, he knew how to combine civic passion, scientific rigour, and a profound humanity throughout his long career,” Mattarella wrote in a message to Berlinguer’s family.

Vicente Navarro, first president of the International Association of Health Policy, which Berlinguer co-founded with him, said he “combined a very strong commitment to justice and democracy, on the one hand, with a great demand for rigour on the other, a combination that made him extremely effective.”

Berlinguer believed that everyone had a right to health, equality, and social justice, and saw science as a civilising force, which along with politics should be pressed into service for the common good. He is credited with helping to forge the concept of what is now known as the social determinants of health, and from 2005 to 2008 he was a member of the World Health Organization’s dedicated commission on this topic. Its chair, Michael Marmot, described Berlinguer as a “remarkable colleague,” who was “at once charming, insightful, knowledgeable, sincere, committed—all enlivened by an impish sense of humour.”

Berlinguer was a strong advocate of women’s rights to abortion in Italy, a predominantly Catholic country. He frequently travelled to Latin America as part of his work with the International Association of Health Policy, at a time when many of the countries he visited were in the grip of military juntas fundamentally opposed to the views he espoused.

Until 1999 Berlinguer taught social medicine, and public and occupational health, initially in his native Sassari and subsequently in Rome. He wrote and co-wrote more than 50 books and reports, the last of which, Health History: From Privilege to Right, was published in 2011. One of his first, Medicine is Sick, published in 1959, was not only a trenchant critique of the Italian healthcare system, but also foresaw what would become the guiding principles of subsequent reform: disease prevention, the impact of environment and work on health, and inequitable access to care.

Throughout his life Berlinguer concerned himself with ethics, and used his presidency of the Italian National Bioethics Committee to shift its focus to the ethics of daily life—diagnosis, treatment, and prevention. One of his most important and enduring ethical legacies was the report he drafted with Leo De Castro for UNESCO’s international bioethics committee. It became the basis for the Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights in 2005, encompassing the entire human lifespan

Berlinguer was honoured with the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic in 1999, and with the gold medal for services to culture and the arts in 2001. Predeceased by his wife, Giulia, in 2014, he leaves three children.