An atypical anatomo-pathologist and workaholic, Claude Got has carried out the functions of head of hospital department, teacher and, sometimes, member of the ministerial cabinet. His research led him to be called upon in many public health advisory structures, which he slammed the door on when he felt that they were not heard by decision-makers. The recommendations he made, despite virulent opposition, on speed, alcohol or tobacco, saved thousands of lives, while earning him a reputation as a “liberticidal hygienist”.
Born on May 5, 1936, in Sarreguemines (Moselle), he died on August 11, in Linkebeek (Belgium), accompanied by his daughter Isabelle and one of his grandsons, after an euthanasia that he would not have could obtain in France. Since the end of 2021, he had suffered from neurodegenerative disorders, which he attributed to Alzheimer’s disease. His condition had worsened after the death, in December 2022, of his wife, Claude-Marie, without whom he said he no longer wanted to live.
Claude and “Claudie” had met in 1938, thanks to the friendship of their fathers, psychiatrists. They married in 1956 and never left each other: while being passionate about languages (including Russian, Turkish or Serbo-Croatian), “Madam Got”, as he also called her, actively shared her husband’s professional life. She reread his manuscripts and listened to his inexhaustible chatter, while knitting him woolen sweaters, which he wore everywhere, even in the ministries. The couple had three daughters, including twins, Virginie and Brigitte, who suffered from multiple sclerosis and died in 2013 (drowning) and 2019 respectively.
The two Claudes have always wanted “die together”, but a stroke decided otherwise. The husband wanted to follow his wife, but Isabelle asked her for a respite from ” three months “, the time to prepare, including materially. Claude Got explained to his grandchildren that he himself, in 1992, consented to inject his mother, Renée, then 88 years old, with a lethal injection, as she requested. And that his grandfather, Roger, psychiatrist, paraplegic, had been helped to die by a veterinary friend, in 1957, at the age of 50. The Got spouses had written a text themselves, as early as 2014, in which each claimed the “right to define the limits of [sa] life “.
Autopsies and crash tests
This distance that Claude Got had with death will have saved thousands of lives: in 1970, when he was head of the pathological anatomy department at the Raymond-Poincaré hospital, in Garches (Hauts-de-Seine) , a doctor from Renault asks for help to manufacture seat belts, which cars are beginning to be equipped with. Claude Got then performs autopsies and simulates accidents on corpses bequeathed to science, in order to calculate the necessary width or rigidity: he thus invents “accidentology”.
You have 54.16% of this article left to read. The following is for subscribers only.