EDITO - Why Emmanuelle Charpentier's Nobel Prize in Chemistry is bad news for France

EDITORIAL

>> The 2020 Nobel Prize in chemistry has been awarded to Frenchwoman Emmanuelle Charpentier and American Jennifer Doudna for the discovery of the DNA chisel Crispr-Cas9, announced the Nobel committee on Wednesday, October 7.

This award is given to them for "the development of a method of editing genes", with "a tool to rewrite the code of life," said the jury in Stockholm when announcing the award.

On Europe 1, editorialist Nicolas Beytout explains why this award is actually bad news for France and demonstrates the country's lack of attractiveness for great scientists. 

Emmanuelle Charpentier studied in France, but she works abroad

"When I spoke about it yesterday to one of the greatest French geneticists, he had this sentence: 'I am happy for the woman, and unhappy for France'. And here is why: Emmanuelle Charpentier did most of her studied in France, including in some of the most renowned institutes in the world, then went abroad to complete her training and launch her research, which is very traditional in this type of training.

What is less so, and what is a shame in any case, is that she never returned to France.

She has developed a tremendous career in the United States and Germany, but not in France.

Abroad, she raised funds, several tens of millions of dollars, to found a company that is very active today and provides research tools to major cognitive science and genetics laboratories around the world.

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"The universal system sprinkles money instead of pointing it towards excellence"

This is her fault: this exceptional woman, this researcher, is also an entrepreneur.

And things get stuck in France: with us, for example, a researcher in the hospital or university world has almost no right to combine his remuneration with another salary.

So, you think, create a box!

No, it is everyone under the height of egalitarianism.

The universal system sprinkles the money, instead of pointing it towards excellence.

It is the rule of 'a little for all, but nothing more for one'.

The reign of the mean, what.

Her work, and that of her co-laureate, focuses on a gene modification technique.

Here too, we see that there is unease in France.

Among the areas potentially affected by his immense discoveries, there is agronomy and a possible way of bypassing GMOs.

So that opens up an infinite field, but in a country hostile to GMOs as we are, with a political class that is tearing itself apart over the temporary reintroduction of neonicotinoids to avoid (just that) losing the entire sugar industry, it is difficult to feel supported.

So all these talents will make their discoveries bear fruit elsewhere.

"France venerates a tomb while being afraid of the future"

However, in France, we still have the figure of Pierre and Marie Curie, Nobel Prize in chemistry and both are in the Pantheon, the most majestic place of republican glory.

France devotes a real cult to Marie and Pierre Curie, but it now doubts science: it is afraid of discovery.

She venerates a tomb while being afraid of the future.

Part of the population rejects vaccines, another is ready to follow any enlightened guru.

If we no longer know how to seduce researchers, to bring back or retain future French Nobel Prize winners, it is part of our system of excellence that will quickly find itself in danger. "