Jacques Benveniste

Jacques Benveniste ( born March 12, 1935 in Paris, † October 3, 2004 ) was a French physician.

Life

Jacques Benveniste worked at the Institut national de la santé et de la recherche médicale (INSERM ), the French health and research institute, and in 1984 was appointed director of the research department of the institute. In 1970, he discovered the " Platelet - activating factor " (PAF ), a growth factor associated with angiogenesis.

Benveniste was known primarily for his assertion that highly diluted antigens could have a " memory effect " of water white blood cells ( leukocytes) influence. A report on this groundbreaking appearing particularly for homeopathy news was published in 1988 even in the prestigious scientific journal Nature, and drew a long dispute by themselves.

However, other investigators failed to confirm the effect in the experiment. What's more, under the supervision of the Nature editor in chief John Maddox and the American pseudo - sciences opponent James Randi did not succeed Benveniste himself to repeat his own results.

The end for Benveniste's theory of the " memory of water " (see also: Water clusters) came in the form of existing as open and unbiased physicist and Nobel laureate Georges Charpak: This proposed Benveniste a series of experiments, which were performed under his supervision. The result of these experiments was devastating for Benveniste: possibly random effects could be detected. Charpak 1995 stated in conclusion that Benveniste's " water manipulations " would have no detectable effect. Despite this, Advanced Benveniste later his position yet, by claiming that the information of the water could also be transmitted via telephone or Internet.

Jacques Benveniste was twice awarded the satirical Ig Nobel Prize for Chemistry. 1991 and 1998, Nature magazine has never withdrawn the controversial report, however, describes in October 2004 in an obituary that the report of scientists was not widely taken seriously, nowhere could be reproduced and that Benveniste 's research mainly continued in the "Digital Biology Laboratory " privately financed by him in Clamart and not at INSERM.