It’s been a year now the geneticist and president of the National League against cancer, Axel Kahn has left us at the age of 76 due to cancer. On June 17, 2021, a few weeks before his death, the scientist published his Calmed chronicle of the end of a life journey. In this text where he described his end of life, Axel Kahn had delivered the following passage: “I’m going to die, soon”, he said. My cancer has become irreducible, okay, we’re not going to make a cheese of it. I knew a few days, I have to sort (…) The objective is to live as pleasantly and usefully as possible in contempt of an evil that we do not have the means for the moment to disturb, but whose tyranny I am determined to avoid.”
“I often surprise myself to find him extraordinary, my father”
A year after the death of her father, Cécile Kahn, the daughter of Axel Kahn, gave a poignant testimony to the newspaper The mountain on his father’s last days: “If he staged his death, it was thinking of those that his speeches could comfort or inspire. Until the end, he made the choice to give everything. My father always told us: ‘ I want to create something that I can bequeath to you.’ I thank him from the bottom of my heart: he did very well.” she said before concluding: “Now that he is no longer there, I discover or rediscover this facet of his personality and his commitments. I often find myself finding him extraordinary, my father.”
Aware of his impending death, Axel Kahn was able to spend his last days in the company of his family, as he confided in his column: “Hand in hand with my loved ones who will be pierced by my love, myself shrouded in their love, I will fall asleep, they will see me fall asleep. I will soon be no more, they will still be, I will accompany them. Axel , the wolf, is about to let things happen, smiling.” Words that the late Axel Kahn must surely think of from up there.