« My only motivation is to advance medicine. I do it for my patients », Confided in 2005 daily Le Monde Jean-Michel Dubernard, a trained urologist, whose ambition was commensurate with his operative talent. He died on Saturday at the age of 80.
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).
Accustomed to world premieres of the transplant
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 my vocation after appendicitis surgery and the announcement of my first kidney transplant. »(Editor’s note: in Boston in the United States), explained in the evening daily this workaholic, 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.
This was followed by the first transplant in the world of a hand, in September 1998, on New Zealander Clint Hallam, then that – bilateral – of the hands and forearms. on Frenchman Denis Chatelier in January 2000.
Five years later, at 64, he struck a new big planetary blow by participating in the first partial face transplant (the triangle formed by the nose and the mouth) on the French Isabelle Dinoire, disfigured by her dog.
In 2008, he received the Medewar award which recognizes outstanding contributions in the field of transplantation.
His reputation is such that many years later an Icelandic man with both arms amputated, on his advice, settled in Lyon to benefit from a transplant. He will finally be operated on in January, in a new success of the Lyon school of transplantation.
Political commitment
Deputy mayor of Lyon from 1983 to 2001 – successively Francisque Collomb (UDF), Michel Noir (RPR) then the centrist Raymond Barre – but also deputy for the 3rd district of the Rhône (1986-2007), Jean-Michel Dubernard n he will never have a governmental destiny despite an appeal in 1986 from Jacques Chirac. But the Ministry of Research will escape him in favor of Senator Jacques Valade.
In Lyon, for the municipal elections of March 2001, the doctor will not obtain the nomination of the right to replace Raymond Barre either. He will join the UDF Michel Mercier, unsuccessful candidate facing his socialist opponent, a certain Gérard Collomb.
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, Jean-Michel Dubernard withdrew from public life .
Divorced, he had three children. He was a knight of the Legion of Honor, of the National Order of Merit and of the Academic Palms.
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