Jacques Benveniste
 Jacques Benveniste    (immunologist) | |
|---|---|
| Born | 12 March 1935 Paris, France |
| Died | 3 October 2004 (Age 69) |
| Nationality | French |
Jacques Benveniste was a French immunologist who was Head of allergy and inflammation immunology at the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research (Inserm).
Career
In 1988, Benveniste and colleagues published a paper in Nature describing the action of very high dilutions of anti-IgE antibody on the degranulation of human basophils, findings that seemed to support the concept of homeopathy.[1]
After the article was published, a follow-up investigation was set up by a team including professional skeptics John Maddox, James Randi and Walter Stewart. With the cooperation of Benveniste's own team, the group failed to replicate the original results, and subsequent investigations did not support Benveniste's findings.[2]
Benveniste refused to retract, damaging his reputation and forcing him to fund research himself, as external sources of funding were withdrawn.[3] Two years later, then aged 55, Benveniste was sacked from his job at Inserm.[4]
Benveniste pursued his research in a room on the parking of his former institute, with a caravan for storing materials.[5]
Despite its critics, Nobel Laureate Luc Montagnier subsequently took up Benveniste's work on water memory, and he and a number of other scientists stated they had successfully replicated Benveniste's experiments.[6]
References
- ↑ https://www.nature.com/articles/333816a0
- ↑ https://alixus.wordpress.com/benveniste/
- ↑ https://doi.org/10.1038%2F334287a0
- ↑ https://www.theguardian.com/science/2004/oct/21/obituaries.guardianobituaries
- ↑ https://www.scirp.org/journal/paperinformation.aspx?paperid=89620
- ↑ https://www.science.org/content/article/unesco-host-meeting-controversial-memory-water-research-rev2
