by Elizabeth Pain from Science Mag:
It would have been a personal triumph for Marthe Gautier, an 88-year-old pediatric cardiologist and scientist living in Paris. On 31 January, during a meeting in Bordeaux, Gautier was to receive a medal for her role in the discovery of the cause of Down syndrome in the late 1950s. In a speech, she planned to tell an audience of younger French geneticists her story about the discovery—and how she felt the credit she deserved went to a male colleague, Jérôme Lejeune.
But Gautier's talk was canceled just hours in advance, and she received the medal a day later in a small, private ceremony. The French Federation of Human Genetics (FFGH), which organized the meeting, decided to scrap the event after two bailiffs showed up with a court order granting them permission to tape Gautier’s speech. They were sent by the Jérôme Lejeune Foundation, which wanted to have a record of the talk. The foundation, which supports research and care for patients with genetic intellectual disabilities and campaigns against abortion, said it had reason to believe Gautier would "tarnish" the memory of Lejeune, who died in 1994.
It would have been a personal triumph for Marthe Gautier, an 88-year-old pediatric cardiologist and scientist living in Paris. On 31 January, during a meeting in Bordeaux, Gautier was to receive a medal for her role in the discovery of the cause of Down syndrome in the late 1950s. In a speech, she planned to tell an audience of younger French geneticists her story about the discovery—and how she felt the credit she deserved went to a male colleague, Jérôme Lejeune.
But Gautier's talk was canceled just hours in advance, and she received the medal a day later in a small, private ceremony. The French Federation of Human Genetics (FFGH), which organized the meeting, decided to scrap the event after two bailiffs showed up with a court order granting them permission to tape Gautier’s speech. They were sent by the Jérôme Lejeune Foundation, which wanted to have a record of the talk. The foundation, which supports research and care for patients with genetic intellectual disabilities and campaigns against abortion, said it had reason to believe Gautier would "tarnish" the memory of Lejeune, who died in 1994.
