Medical progress, psychological factors and global care of the patient: lessons from the treatment of childhood leukemia.

The history of treatment of childhood leukemia is a meaningful model of ethical, bioethical and organizational repercussions of medical progress. Specifically, it has provided precious indications and very useful tools to cope with several of the more important problems of modern medicine: the value of controlled randomized studies; the risks of intense medicalization impairing the quality of care; the importance of a valid doctor-patient relationship; the psycho-emotive involvement of the pediatric staff; and last but not least, the need of an unrelenting effort of humanization of the procedures and environments, hand in hand with the frequent adjustments of the protocols according to scientific and technological progress. Finally, the authors comment upon the first cures (1962-1966) observed in the Pediatrics Clinic of the Sapienza University of Rome.