(FILES) President of the Academy of Sciences Etienne-Emile Baulieu is photographed on March 4, 2004 within the Mazarine library of the Institut de France in Paris. French professor Etienne-Emile Baulieu, who made main contributions to the data of steroid hormones and developed RU 486, the primary secure, efficient contragestive remedy (abortion capsule), has died aged 98, his spouse introduced to AFP on Could 30, 2025. (Picture by Joël SAGET / AFP)
French scientist Etienne-Emile Baulieu, the inventor of the abortion capsule, died on the age of 98 at his house in Paris on Friday, his spouse advised AFP.
The physician and researcher, who achieved worldwide renown for his work that led to the capsule, had an eventful life that included combating within the French resistance and changing into associates with artists resembling Andy Warhol.
“His analysis was guided by his dedication to the progress made attainable by science, his dedication to girls’s freedom, and his need to allow everybody to dwell higher, longer lives,” Baulieu’s spouse Simone Harari Baulieu mentioned in a press release.
French President Emmanuel Macron paid tribute to his life, calling him “a beacon of braveness” and “a progressive thoughts who enabled girls to win their freedom”.
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“Few French folks have modified the world to such an extent,” he added in a publish on X.
Baulieu’s most well-known discovery helped create the oral drug RU-486, also referred to as mifepristone, which offered a secure and cheap various to surgical abortion to hundreds of thousands of ladies internationally.
For many years, he pushed governments to authorize the drug, dealing with fierce criticism and generally threats from opponents of abortion.
When Wyoming turned the primary US state to outlaw the abortion capsule in 2023, Baulieu advised AFP it was “scandalous”.
Then aged 96, Baulieu mentioned he had devoted a big a part of his life to “growing the liberty of ladies,” and such bans had been a step within the fallacious route.
On information of his demise, French Equality Minister Aurore Berge handed on her condolences to Baulieu’s household, saying on X he was “guided all through his life by one requirement: human dignity.”
‘Fascinated by artists’
Born on December 12, 1926 in Strasbourg to Jewish dad and mom, Etienne Blum was raised by his feminist mom after his father, a physician, died.
He modified his title to Emile Baulieu when he joined the French resistance in opposition to Nazi occupation on the age of 15, then later including Etienne.
After the struggle, he turned a self-described “physician who does science,” specializing within the discipline of steroid hormones.
Invited to work in the US, Baulieu was observed in 1961 by Gregory Pincus, often known as the daddy of the contraceptive capsule, who satisfied him to concentrate on intercourse hormones.
Again in France, Baulieu designed a method to block the impact of the hormone progesterone, which is crucial for the egg to implant within the uterus after fertilization.
This led to the event of mifepristone in 1982.
READ: French hard-left carry abortion drugs to Poland
Dragged earlier than the courts and demonized by US anti-abortion teams who accused him of inventing a “demise capsule”, Baulieu refused to again down.
“Adversity slides off him like water off a duck’s again,” Simone Harari Baulieu advised AFP.
“You, a Jew and a resistance fighter, you had been overwhelmed with probably the most atrocious insults and even in comparison with Nazi scientists,” Macron mentioned as he introduced Baulieu with France’s high honor in 2023.
“However you held on, for the love of freedom and science.”
Within the Nineteen Sixties, literature fan Baulieu turned associates with artists resembling Andy Warhol.
He mentioned he was “fascinated by artists who declare to have entry to the human soul, one thing that can eternally stay past the attain of scientists.”
Alzheimer’s, melancholy analysis
Baulieu saved going into his Parisian workplace effectively into his mid-90s.
“I might be bored if I didn’t work anymore,” he mentioned in 2023.
His latest analysis has included looking for a method to stop the event of Alzheimer’s illness, in addition to a remedy for extreme melancholy, for which scientific trials are presently underway internationally.
“There isn’t any purpose we can’t discover remedies” for each sicknesses, he mentioned.
Baulieu was additionally the primary to explain how the hormone DHEA secreted from adrenal glands in 1963.
He was satisfied of the hormone’s anti-aging skills, however medication utilizing it solely had restricted results, resembling in skin-firming lotions.
In the US, Baulieu was additionally awarded the celebrated Lasker prize in 1989.
After his spouse Yolande Compagnon died, Baulieu married Simone Harari in 2016.
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He leaves behind three kids, eight grandchildren and 9 great-grandchildren, in line with the assertion launched by his household.
