Lucia's complaint: "I was discriminated against in competitions because I had a tumor"

Caserta. “Today, more than ever, I feel the need to clearly explain the problem that leads me to celebrate this victory with a bitter taste in my mouth.”

This is how the new video shared by Lucia Palermo, a thirty-year-old originally from San Marco Evangelista, in the province of Caserta, which launched a petition on Change.org last summer to eliminate discrimination against former cancer patients in public competitions. The petition has since collected nearly 60.000 signatures.

Commenting on the news of the approval of the law on oncological oblivion, Lucia, who in September had been received by the president of the Social Affairs Committee of the Chamber Ugo Cappellacci, explains that "in the competitions to which I have always referred, namely those in the Police Force, the Police and the Armed Forces, there is an age limit that varies from 25 to 32 years approximately depending on the competition.

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With the law on the right to be forgotten in oncology, as it was approved, situations like those I brought to light do not obtain protection, because a wait of 5 or 10 years does not protect those people who want to participate in the competitions I mentioned.”

“I was told,” Lucia adds, “that from today we will try to work on the issue I raised to find the optimal solution. Well, I don’t know what the optimal solution might be, but what I can assure you is that I won’t stay silent. I will continue the collection of signatures on Change.org today more than ever, so that these promises are actually kept.

So please excuse me if today, instead of celebrating, I am here to make my message shareable and to ask you to spread it as best you can, so that the enthusiasm that many are showing today does not overshadow the struggle that for many of us is still ongoing to make this law truly a protection for all.”

Palermo is once again calling for a review of the rules that have excluded her and many others from public competitions because of a tumor. “In a certain sense,” she says, “the rules equate someone who has had a tumor to a criminal, and this is not right. After overcoming breast cancer in 2021, I was declared unfit for a public competition for a psychologist in the Guardia di Finanza because I was a former cancer patient. I had undergone emergency surgery and undergone chemotherapy and neoadjuvant radiotherapy, that is, for pure prevention. Today, I follow hormone therapy and I am fine.”

“After years of study, master's degrees, commitment, I saw my dream shattered because,” she explains in the text of her campaign and in the accompanying video appeal, addressed to the Government and Parliament, “I had an illness. Public competitions have an age limit, so I will no longer be able to participate. I ask you for a hand so that we can change the legislation and prevent these injustices from happening again for all people like me.”

“The decree in question, to which the announcement refers, equates,” Palermo points out, “those who survive breast cancer to those who are still ill, thus deeming post-cancer incompatible with military life.

But if I have passed all the medical, psycho-attitudinal and physical tests, and if there are several oncologists who have written in black and white how I am fully healthy and able to carry out any activity without any problem, this is pure bureaucratic discrimination. I think it is necessary to change this decree, given that today those who survive cancer have a life expectancy equal to those who have never had a tumor.

I think it is useful for all women who in the future will have the same problem and the same dream as me. As long as the laws continue to make the life of those who have fought against cancer a living hell, then. I know that my dream has now been shattered because of a disease that I did not choose to have but that I have nevertheless faced and overcome. If I am here today it is because I would like to change the future of a future Lucia who will have the same dream as me and unfortunately the same disease as me. I would not want,” she concludes, “for her to also experience this discrimination first hand as I have experienced it.”