Summer 1985 Otho Iliopoulos he had just completed his studies at the Medical School of the University of Athens. He made the decision to stay abroad and shared it with a man who in previous years had been his guide in the organization of medical students of the Democratic Struggle, Youth, that is KKE Interior. Nikos Voutsis, who was the mentor, listened with growing surprise and discomfort, “with clear rejection of the idea,” as Mr. Iliopoulos himself recalls, telling him he was going to the US because he wanted to specialize in cancer. treatment .

“You are crazy; And what will happen to Eurocommunism?” asked the old guide angrily. “Niko, if Eurocommunism depends on whether I go to America, then he is in a very difficult situation, he cannot be saved at all,” young Iliopoulos replied then.

“You can say that I made a selfish choice. I went there and made my career without being distracted by the political struggle that everyone else was doing. If that’s the case, then it’s time to give something back,” Mr. Iliopoulos explains today, also answering why he accepted his offer. Alexis Tsipras be at the head of one’s state ballot SYRIZA.

What could he return? “If you tell me where I want to work, what I dream of, the answer is: I want to make the national health system better,” he replies. And he advocates for the public health system. “I am not saying that the private has no quality. The public, however, provides access for everyone, it’s better and cheaper, it’s security, because it’s not an investment that, if it is not considered to bring the expected return, the investor may decide to transfer it somewhere else. . However, the public sector also needs to be healthy in order to make money.”

For the general public, he is one of the “Scientists of SYRIZA”, people recruited into the think tank of the official opposition party, and his name was heard during the pandemic, as one of the advisers to the head of the official party opposition to a special agreement that appeared in 2010.

But for those who know the people and things in the inner left, he has strong political ties to the area since the KKE Esotericos and a close relationship with the oldest guard of SYRIZA.

“I don’t see superiority as something bad. I believe that SYRIZA strives for excellence. And you have to evaluate. But don’t shoot.”

At the same time, he actively participated in a number of government interventions by the current official opposition party. He mentions, for example, the creation of the Hellenic Research and Innovation Foundation by Deputy Minister of Research and Technology Kostas Fotakis as a decisive intervention. “Through this money mature PhD researchers have been allocated and we have brought back about 15 new guys and I have contributed to that. We have built a network of molecular oncology … This means superiority, ”he says.

Superiority almost demonized by SYRIZA? “I don’t see perfection as a bad thing, I think SYRIZA strives for excellence, but not in the way it’s done, because when combined with evaluation, they are almost punitive. And you have to evaluate. But not to shoot, but to see how we can improve, to find where we are suffering,” he emphasizes.

He has experience in valuation both as an appraiser and as an appraiser. In 2014-2015, he participated as an external evaluator in the EKPA medicine assessment. “They were worried about telling them if they were good or bad. In Greece, no one can focus on “how to get better”. If I criticize you, it is considered an attack. Every year we bring external assessors to our Harvard Research Center, and our concern is what they have to tell us to improve, what we lack, what we do not understand.”

And how can we tell? “Let’s ask. In Greece, we all say that we have a problematic healthcare system. Let someone ask users of the system what is wrong? This is an assessment. Let’s ask students about the educational work of teachers. Nobody is making the obvious: ask users. This means, that we do not have the necessary data, the necessary information to go further.

Mr. Iliopoulos also disagrees with university admissions principles, another issue that has been at the center of political controversy in recent days. “Success in an instant exam depends on a lot of factors that we cannot know, so firing someone for not getting a base is arbitrary. This does not mean that everyone will go to university. Universities will set the amount they can teach and accept them. But there shouldn’t be empty seats.

After leaving Greece in 1985, Mr. Iliopoulos first went to Wisconsin where he studied pathology and then to Harvard where he became a researcher in solid tumors and contributed to important discoveries that contribute to the development of new therapeutic protocols. . He notes that he chose the United States when he realized that there was a revolution in cancer research going on there, and lived through this revolution. Now he chooses the way back to return to Greece. “Now I have experience and knowledge that I believe allow me to give something back to Greece. I owe her, she studied me, she doesn’t owe me,” he says.

The task in parliament for him is to be able to ask the right questions, because he considers this the greatest art, but, “if the village does not want, one is not enough.” And as an MP, he will now join his old comrades, even though the fight for Eurocommunism is probably lost forever.