Christian Cottet.
Laurent BRAUNSHAUSEN / CIT'images / Laurent BRAUNSHAUSEN / CIT'images
LE FIGARO .- The AFM-Telethon is the only association of patients which has founded its own research institutes.
What is the reason for this specificity?
Christian COTTET.
- In 1958, the French Association against Myopathies (AFM) was created by parents and patients affected by neuromuscular diseases.
This covers over 400 different neuromuscular diseases, most of it genetic.
From the start, the AFM has been a militant association, fighting against diseases and whose key words are: refuse, resist, cure.
For a long time, rare diseases have been overlooked in research, whether private or public.
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Patient associations, structures that have become essential in the medical landscape
This is the reason why the AFM, thanks to the money from the Telethon, founded, in 1990, its Genethon laboratory.
Initially, its goal was knowledge of the genome.
We were still very far from therapy;
it was necessary to understand diseases and their causes in order to try to cure them.
Généthon distinguished himself by the achievement
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