Biochimistes et biomédecine dans l'après-guerre : deux itinéraires entre laboratoire et hôpital

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Abstract
Jean-Paul Gaudillière: French biochemists and biomedicine in the postwar era: two paths between laboratory and hospital. The paper focuses on the changing roles of biochemists in France after World War II to illustrate the emergence of a biomedical research centered on biological laboratories. It shows that the process consisted in a demedicalization of biochemistry. Strong articulations with medical demands were turned into non direct links based on longterm expectations. The paper describes two teams working in hospitals. Similar changes ocured in both places: medical research agencies became preeminent partners; collaborations with biologists, especially with molecular biologists, replaced collaborations with physicians; experimental practices aiming at the construction of diagnostic methods or at the analysis of correlations between chemical changes and pathological processes became second rank priorities; reorganization of work at the bench favored the search for molecular causality and the use of model Systems. The paper emphasizes both the impact of instrument transferts and the influence of state research policies. The comparison of the two groups sheds some light on the connections which were established in the late sixties and based upon interests in potential transferts toward clinical settings.

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