“Everyone knew about it, but no one moved”, lamented, Saturday, November 26, on franceinfo Laurence Dezélée, vice-president of the Charnier Descartes association. A rally was held on Saturday, November 27 in Thiais, near Paris to protest against the scandal of the university’s body donation center. A year ago, the Express revealed the existence of a real “mass grave” within this center. An investigation into the conditions of conservation of the remains given to science, including that of Laurence Dezélée’s mother, is underway. Several people were indicted, including the university as a legal person.
franceinfo: Beyond those responsible, you want to know what happened to the bodies of your loved ones. Did you have any information?
Laurence Dezélée: Some people have had responses from the university. The president told us that she was going to help us, answer questions from families who wanted it. Some families don’t want it because it’s too hard, some university statements doubt. As far as I’m concerned, I would like all the light to be shed on my grief. So, I asked to know and I was told: medical confidentiality. There are three of us, four families who have not had an answer. We were just told, medical confidentiality.
Did the indictment of the university as a legal person have an impact on these revelations?
Perhaps, it is possible. At the beginning, we had met the president with her lawyer, in February 2020. She told us that she was going to help us shed light on the families who want it. I asked if there were responsibilities established for the former presidents of the university. Would she turn against these people? There was a hesitation and the lawyer told me “yes, of course, we will take action.” They tried but we told them no.
Did some pretend not to know?
There’s a lot of talk about omerta in the news and that’s exactly what happened to us. We can see through the emails we have received, which are internal exchanges within the university, that everyone was aware but that no one moved.
We are talking about automobile crash tests, military experiments, do we know everything that has been done with the bodies of people who are donated to science?
I believe that if we continue to dig we will find oil, it is inexhaustible, we are discovering a little more every day. This morning at Thiais cemetery, a gentleman came to talk to me. He told me that his brother-in-law worked in air freight and that he never wanted his parents to donate their bodies to science and Descartes specifically, and he told me, now I know why. It was because he saw entire charters leaving for Africa with bodies.
What purpose ? Do you have someone to answer this question?
No. I hope that the examining magistrate will hear us, ask the right questions and question everyone, all those responsible for this horror. We have no relationship with the Ministry of Higher Education because we wanted to dialogue with them, we sent two letters, but Ms. Vidal never replied. We have never been received, nor at the Ministry of Health by Olivier Véran. We try to dialogue but there is nothing opposite. We have the impression that we are being made fun of. It’s like we don’t exist.