“The reason I became a public figure (…)is that the information does not circulate. (…) It’s been a year, I was invited once to your place, once elsewhere, that’s all. Is this normal, when I think I have an opinion on gene therapies that perhaps deserves the French to know? “ The tone is set. Guest of the CNews channel, on May 26, geneticist Alexandra Henrion-Caude, described as “leader of the antivax,” has a voice that trembles with unfeigned anger, despite her omnipresent smile.
Two days earlier, the former research director of the prestigious National Institute of Health and Medical Research (Inserm), 52, was filmed by the cameras of the show Daily on the podium of an anti-ax and anti-helmet rally, where the comic Jean-Marie Bigard and the singer Francis Lalanne appeared. Seeing the camera, she did not stop smiling, but made the journalists boo, treated as “collaborators” by the crowd present, while Jean-Marie Bigard insulted the former Minister of Health Agnès Buzyn, treated of “Big bitch”.
The presence alongside the author of the sketch “letting go of sluts” of a renowned researcher, former disciple of Professor Axel Kahn, is surprising. “It’s the story of a gentle madness, she has entered something from which she can no longer get out”, regrets Doctor Jérôme Marty, president of the French Union of Liberal Doctors (URML). Like a handful of scientists, Mme Henrion-Caude has been feeding the conspiracy sphere for months, relaying her doubts about messenger RNA vaccines (Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna), which she believes will “Genetically modify us”. An assertion that she was able to repeat – contrary to what she says – many times in several media, from CNews to Sud Radio through the flagship program of Cyril Hanouna, “Touche pas à mon poste”.
A gradual drift
His posture saddens his former colleagues at Inserm. Within the institute, where the embarrassment is perceptible, we are content to recall that Mr.me Henrion-Caude is “Retired since August 2019. She is not an emeritus researcher at Inserm and we no longer have any links (…) with this former collaborator. Consequently, today it can only speak in its own name ”. In fact, Mme Henrion-Caude has been living in Mauritius for several years, where she launched, in 2017 with her husband, a mysterious research laboratory, “SimplissimA”, which mainly aims to enhance traditional remedies.
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