The Lyon medical professor Jean-Michel Dubernard, one of the world pioneers in transplantation, died Saturday evening in Turkey, we learned from a relative.
Aged 80, the one who was also a deputy for the Rhône succumbed to a malaise, which occurred at Istanbul airport while traveling with his family, said the same source confirming information from the regional daily Le Progrès.
The professor emeritus succeeded in the first world transplant of a hand, in 1998, on the New Zealander Clint Hallam. Two years later, he achieved a new feat with a bilateral hand and forearm transplant on Frenchman Denis Chatelier. In 2005, he struck a new big planetary blow by participating in the first partial transplant of the face (the triangle formed by the nose and the mouth) on the French Isabelle Dinoire, disfigured by her dog. In 2008, Jean-Michel Dubernard received the Medawar Prize which recognizes exceptional contributions in the field of transplantation.
Deputy mayor of Lyon from 1983 to 2001, under the mandates of Francisque Collomb, Michel Noir and Raymond Barre, he was also deputy of the Rhône from 1986 to 2007, under the label RPR then UMP.
At the National Assembly, the doctor, author of the book “Saving the Safety” and of a thick encyclopedia of surgery, had also held the positions of chairman of the Commission for Cultural Affairs and first vice-chairman of the Office. parliamentary evaluation of health policies.
After a stint at the Haute Autorité de Santé (2008-2017), where he headed the Transparency Commission which evaluates drugs that have obtained their marketing authorization, he retired from public life.
"Advancing medicine"
“My only motivation is to advance medicine. I do it for my patients, ”this outstanding surgeon, trained urologist, whose ambition was commensurate with his operative talent, confided to the daily Le Monde in 2005. Born in Lyon on May 17, 1941, Jean-Michel Dubernard had spent his entire medical career in the capital of the Gauls, where he held the post of head of the urology and transplantations department at the Edouard Herriot hospital (1987-2002).
At the same time a professor at the Claude Bernard Lyon I University and a researcher at the National Institute of Health and Medical Research, he is the author of some 500 international medical publications.
"I was barely 11 years old when I had a vocation after an operation for appendicitis and the announcement of the first kidney transplant (editor's note: in Boston, in the United States)", explained in the evening daily this workaholic, a big fan of rugby and poetry in his spare time.
Doctor of medicine and human biology, also trained at Harvard Medical School in Boston under the American surgeon Joseph Murray, Nobel Prize winner in medicine in 1990, Jean-Michel Dubernard - whom his relatives nicknamed "Max" - had successfully completed the first European kidney-pancreas transplant in 1976.