After spending brief periods in England and France, he joined the Italian Cancer Institute in Milan as a volunteer. Veronesi was the founder of breast-conserving surgery in breast cancer treatment with the invention of the technique of quadrantectomy which challenged the dominant paradigm among surgeons that cancer could only be treated with aggressive surgery. He supported and promoted scientific research aimed at improving conservative surgical techniques, including sentinel lymph node biopsy, which resulted in axillary dissection in breast cancer with clinically negative lymph nodes no longer being performed. He also contributed to breast cancer prevention conducting studies on tamoxifen and retinoids and verifying their capabilities to prevent the formation of carcinoma. He was an activist in anti-tobacco campaigns. In 1994 he founded the European Institute of Oncology, which he directed until his death. He was appointed President of the Scientific Committee of the Italy-USA Foundation in 2010. In 2009, through his foundation, he started the project "Science for Peace", in order to promote peaceful relations through scientific development. He was Chairman of the BioGeM Scientific Committee.
Political career
1993 member of the national Commission against cancer.
1998 member of the national Commission for the evaluation of "Di Bella therapy" against cancer.
Over the years, Veronesi publicly expressed his views on several ethical issues in interviews, televised debates and his books. Veronesi identified himself as an agnostic, not believing in any form of afterlife. He claimed that human beings should not consider death a terrifying moment, but rather accept it as a biological necessity. He supported active euthanasia, affirming the right of any individual to end their life if it became unbearable due to suffering or loss of dignity. He advocated the necessity to regulate euthanasia at a national level, citing Dutch legislation as a good starting point; he was promoting a campaign for the introduction of living will as a legally binding agreement between the doctor and the incapacitated patient. Veronesi supported genetically modified organisms as a way to produce food with higher nutritional capabilities and deprived of potentially carcinogenic substances. He criticized the current opposition to GMOs as being due to lack of scientific knowledge. Veronesi was an ethical vegetarian and an animal rights advocate.
Awards
Veronesi received thirteen national and international honorary degrees in Medicine, Medical Biotechnologies, Physics, Agricultural Sciences and Pedagogical Sciences.
