Didier Samuel, hepatologist at head of Inserm

The appointment of this figure of liver transplantation at the head of the National Institute of Health and Medical Research was approved by Parliament, Thursday, January 26.

By Nathalie Brafman

In the next few days, Didier Samuel will be appointed head of the National Institute of Health and Medical Research (Inserm). The appointment of this hepatologist was approved Thursday, January 26, by the Parliament (30 votes for, 18 votes against). But deputies and senators opposed: the former voted for, the latter against, denouncing “a new fact of the prince who came from the Elysée”, Emmanuel Macron having refused to renew Gilles Bloch yet candidate for a second term. In a tweet, the senator of Hauts-de-Seine Pierre Ouzoulias (Communist Party) wanted to specify that “neither the person of Didier Samuel nor his skills are called into question” by this vote. His appointment should be ratified during a next council of ministers.

64 years old, Didier Samuel already has a busy career: head of the hepatic hepatology and resuscitation department and medical director of the hepatic transplantation center at the hepatobiliary center at the Paul-Brousse hospital in the public assistance -Hôpitaux de Paris (AP-HP) in Villejuif (Val-de-Marne), director of a physiopathogenesis research unit and treatment of liver disease at INSERM, professor of hepatology and gastroenterology at Paris-Saclay University and at the Paul-Brousse Hospital, president of the National Research Coordination Committee supposed to coordinate hospital research. He is also dean of the Faculty of Medicine and President of the Conference of Deans of Medicine.

As far as he can remember, Didier Samuel has always wanted to be a hepatologist. “I would have been unhappy otherwise,” he said simply. And this passion for this specialty, he owes it to his two “masters”: Henri Bismuth, an eminent figure of hepatic surgery and transplantation, and Jean-Pierre Benhamou, one of the greatest French hepatologists. Young internal, Didier Samuel chooses resuscitation in the first surgery department. Fifteen days after his arrival, Henri Bismuth realizes the first transplant of an adult liver reduced in an 11 -year -old boy, Martial Deschaseaux, in 1981. “It was I who was busy. At the time, The transplant did not work at all, no one dared to do it. Henri Bismuth made it, him. Martial Deschaseaux survived and, forty years later, I am still. “With the second, then head of the Hepato Service -Gastroenterology at Beaujon Hospital (AP-HP), he will learn to understand liver disease. “These two meetings have done what I am today, a doctor and a researcher.”

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/Media reports cited above.