Indictment of the former president of the University of Paris Descartes

AFP has learned that the former president of Paris Descartes University, Frederic Dardel, has been charged with “assault on the integrity of a corpse” in the investigation of improper conditions for the preservation of corpses awarded to science at a body donation centre. The two are from a close source. Frederic Dardel was heard in police custody on 12 November by investigators from the Brigade to Suppress Delinquency Personnel (BRDP) and was released without trial.

He was then first heard on May 6 by Investigating Judge Adrien Lalment, who is responsible for this judicial information that was opened in July 2020, before being summoned again last Friday. “Over the seven years that he will continue his term of office,” which began in early 2012, “Frederic Dardel has only been indicted as president for two years,” his AFP-requested attorney Me Marie Alex Cano Bernard noted.

Suspected commodification of corpses

“However, he never stopped asking for loans…especially for the repair of the mortuary centre, to no avail, which shows, as for other essential public services, the apparent neglect of the state. Added. She confirmed a few months ago “if there is Whoever moved is.”

Dilapidated buildings, rotten remains devoured by rats, suspicion of commodification of corpses … in an article published at the end of November 2019, The Weekly Express He denounced the “inappropriate conditions” for preserving the remains of “thousands of people who have donated their bodies to science.”

Two miners were indicted in April

These discoveries prompted Research Minister Frederic Vidal to order the closure of the “French Anatomy Temple,” which was established in 1953 and which hosted several hundred bodies each year. After this closure, Frederic Dardel in September 2019 became a “special advisor” to the cabinet of this minister, and then since September 2020 director of a research unit at the National Center for Scientific Research.

In June 2020, an administrative investigation by the Inspectorate General of Social Affairs (Igas) and the General Inspectorate for Education and Sports Research (Igésr) estimated that Université Paris Descartes was responsible for “serious ethical violations” in the management of the CDC.

The report pointed to the “importance and recurrence of” alerts “at different levels and according to different vectors, (which) contradict the lack of response commensurate with the seriousness of the facts reported up to 2018.” The University of Paris, a new entity resulting from the merger of Paris Descartes and Paris Diderot in January 2020, was indicted on April 15 for “undermining the integrity of the corpse”. Two of the authors were indicted in December and April.