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French scientist Étienne-Émile Baulieu, the inventor of the abortion tablet, has died on the age of 98 at his house in Paris.
The physician and researcher, who accomplished international renown for his paintings that resulted in the tablet, had an eventful lifestyles that integrated preventing within the French resistance and turning into pals with artists akin to Andy Warhol.
“His research was guided by his commitment to the progress made possible by science, his dedication to women’s freedom, and his desire to enable everyone to live better, longer lives,” Baulieu’s spouse, Simone Harari Baulieu, stated on Friday.
Baulieu’s most renowned discovery helped create the oral drug RU-486, often referred to as mifepristone, which supplied a protected and reasonably priced choice to surgical abortion to hundreds of thousands of girls internationally.
For a long time, he driven governments to authorise the drug, going through fierce grievance and infrequently threats from combatants of abortion.
When Wyoming changed into the primary US state to outlaw the abortion tablet in 2023, Baulieu instructed AFP it was once “scandalous”.
Then elderly 96, Baulieu stated he had devoted a big a part of his lifestyles to “increasing the freedom of women”, and such bans had been a step within the flawed path.
On information of his loss of life, the French equality minister, Aurore Bergé, handed on her condolences to Baulieu’s circle of relatives, pronouncing on X he was once “guided throughout his life by one requirement: human dignity”.
Born on 12 December, 1926 in Strasbourg to Jewish oldsters, Étienne Blum was once raised by means of his feminist mom after his father, a health care provider, died.
He modified his identify to Émile Baulieu when he joined the French resistance towards Nazi profession on the age of 15, then later including Étienne.
After the conflict, he changed into a self-described “doctor who does science”, specialising within the box of steroid hormones.
Invited to paintings in the United States, Baulieu was once spotted in 1961 by means of Gregory Pincus, referred to as the daddy of the contraceptive tablet, who satisfied him to concentrate on intercourse hormones.
Back in France, Baulieu designed a option to block the impact of the hormone progesterone, which is very important for the egg to implant within the uterus after fertilisation. This resulted in the improvement of mifepristone in 1982.
Dragged earlier than the courts and demonised by means of US anti-abortion teams who accused him of inventing a “death pill”, Baulieu refused to backtrack.
“Adversity slides off him like water off a duck’s back,” Simone Harari Baulieu instructed AFP.
“You, a Jew and a resistance fighter, you were overwhelmed with the most atrocious insults and even compared to Nazi scientists,” the French president, Emmanuel Macron, stated as he introduced Baulieu with France’s best honour, the Grand-Croix de l. a. Legion d’Honneur, in 2023. “But you held on, for the love of freedom and science.”
In the 1960s, literature fan Baulieu changed into pals with artists akin to Andy Warhol.
He stated he was once “fascinated by artists who claim to have access to the human soul, something that will forever remain beyond the reach of scientists.”
Baulieu stored going into his Parisian place of job neatly into his mid-90s. “I would be bored if I did not work any more,” he stated in 2023.
His fresh analysis has integrated looking for a option to save you the improvement of Alzheimer’s illness, in addition to a remedy for critical melancholy, for which medical trials are below approach internationally.
“There is no reason we cannot find treatments” for each diseases, he stated.
Baulieu was once additionally the primary to explain how the hormone DHEA was once secreted from adrenal glands in 1963.
He was once satisfied of the hormone’s anti-ageing talents however medication the usage of it handiest had restricted results, akin to in skin-firming lotions.
In the United States, Baulieu was once additionally awarded the distinguished Lasker prize in 1989.
After his first spouse, Yolande Compagnon, died, Baulieu married Simone Harari in 2016.
He leaves in the back of 3 youngsters, 8 grandchildren and 9 great-grandchildren, in step with the commentary launched by means of his circle of relatives.
