A. Emery (1987) (21). The basis of the “prevention” strategy

of Duchenne (DMD) before birth, expressed here by a world famous authority recommending contraception, sterilization, prenatal diagnosis and abortion due to the severity and the lack of effective treatment, in effect, concerns one overall disorder rather than an individual subject. The fact that muscular Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical dystrophy is incurable has, in fact, become a social dogma: “I should like to further stress molecular genetics, an area in which great progress has been made. We are now able to diagnose muscular dystrophy prior to birth. This means that we can establish, already on the embryo, the diagnosis of a disease that is going to kill, at 20 years of age, at the end of an abominable martyrdom. I don’t believe Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical that a medical doctor would Enzalutamide chemical structure refuse prenatal diagnosis to a couple who had already lived this experience.” J.F. Mattei, future Minister of Health (1992) (7). At this stage in the History of Medicine, communications or publications certainly existed, already sustaining the reality of an available palliative therapeutic

approach. This advancement never influenced the dominant dogma of incurability, and the actual continuation of a substantial progress against death issue was not Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical considered worthy of being protected. The dogma was based, it would appear, upon the precise strong influence of a predominant scientific hope: “Three points appear, to me, to be particularly important. The first is that these prenatal Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical screenings are ideally conceived as progress in Scientific knowledge, in Lights and Reason […] The second point is the very great access to these screening techniques. Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical The third is, in a way, a consequence of the first two: i.e., the terrifying lack of acceptance of handicapped people.” D. Sicard, President of CCNE (2007) (9). Moreover in this field, the non-respect of elementary

deontology rules was not unusual (43). The journal Nature (9th June 2005), quoted, as an example, the choice of silence regarding STK38 quality work, on the subject of information, a reprehensible attitude as far as concerns the matter of “medical research where it is sometimes a question of life or death” (44). The current appeals in favour of active euthanasia for MD patients proceed with approximation: “I belong to the first generation of women who have campaigned for abortion and freedom of fecundity. The taboo of sex has been overcome and we do not want to be submitted to the taboo of death” (2007) (4) C. Hury, Secretary General of ADMD (Association for the right to die with dignity). Figure 2 Overall view of the treated patients, in the fourth decade of life, all living at home, collected during medical control, in the hospital.