French scientist Etienne-Emile Baulieu, the inventor of the abortion tablet, died on the age of 98 at his dwelling in Paris on Friday, his spouse instructed AFP.
The physician and researcher, who achieved worldwide renown for his work that led to the tablet, had an eventful life that included preventing within the French resistance and turning into buddies with artists similar to 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 reside 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”.
“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 supplied a secure and cheap different to surgical abortion to hundreds of thousands of girls the world over.
For many years, he pushed governments to authorize the drug, dealing with fierce criticism and typically threats from opponents of abortion.
When Wyoming grew to become the primary US state to outlaw the abortion tablet in 2023, Baulieu instructed AFP it was “scandalous”.
Then aged 96, Baulieu mentioned he had devoted a big a part of his life to “rising the liberty of girls,” and such bans have been a step within the mistaken route.
On information of his loss of life, 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 towards Nazi occupation on the age of 15, then later including Etienne.
After the struggle, he grew to become a self-described “physician who does science,” specializing within the subject of steroid hormones.
Invited to work in the US, Baulieu was seen in 1961 by Gregory Pincus, generally known as the daddy of the contraceptive tablet, who satisfied him to deal with intercourse hormones.
Again in France, Baulieu designed a option to block the impact of the hormone progesterone, which is important for the egg to implant within the uterus after fertilization.
This led to the event of mifepristone in 1982.
Dragged earlier than the courts and demonized by US anti-abortion teams who accused him of inventing a “loss of life tablet”, Baulieu refused to again down.
“Adversity slides off him like water off a duck’s again,” Simone Harari Baulieu instructed AFP.
“You, a Jew and a resistance fighter, you have been overwhelmed with essentially 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 grew to become buddies with artists similar to Andy Warhol.
He mentioned he was “fascinated by artists who declare to have entry to the human soul, one thing that can without end stay past the attain of scientists.”
Alzheimer’s, despair analysis
Baulieu stored going into his Parisian workplace nicely into his mid-90s.
“I’d be bored if I didn’t work anymore,” he mentioned in 2023.
His current analysis has included looking for a option to stop the event of Alzheimer’s illness, in addition to a therapy for extreme despair, for which scientific trials are at the moment underway the world over.
“There isn’t any purpose we can not discover remedies” for each diseases, 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 talents, however medication utilizing it solely had restricted results, similar to 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.
He leaves behind three kids, eight grandchildren and 9 great-grandchildren, in response to the assertion launched by his household.
© 2025 AFP
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