The 2013 Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medicine Research Award and cochlear implants: France unjustly overlooked…!

Four countries, France, the USA, Austria and Australia – in hat chronological order – played key roles in the development f multi-electrode cochlear implants (http://recorlsa.online.fr/ mplantcochleaire/historique.html). In 2010, I sketched out, in hese pages, the story played out all over the world [1], which had een my own for 40 years. For almost half a century, following Djourno and Eyriès, France as made a large contribution to the success of these multilectrode cochlear implants, which have lived up to almost all he hopes of their even most utopian promoters, far beyond the nitial expectations of those who pioneered them. Total hearing oss can more or less always be overcome, even when neonaal, and deaf-mutism is thus now becoming a rarity. Moreover, ulti-electrode cochlear implants are now being fitted in partial evere hearing loss, and the reliability of the material over time s such that bilateral implantation is often indicated nowadays, mproving overall auditory performance and acoustic spatial pereption. Even more remarkable is that cochlear implants have led n to the advent of auditory brainstem implants, the very first mplanted intracranial encephalic electrostimulators – a prosthesis hat should not be underestimated, however rare its indicaions. Quite rightly, therefore, the Lasker jury selected this topic for its linical Medicine Research Award, delivered on September 10th, 013. The choice of actual prize winners, on the other hand, was urprising, inasmuch as, of the four countries that played a role n the development of cochlear implants, only France was overooked. The jury’s decision testifies, in this field, to the oblivion into hich France was cast at the end of the last century. More than 10 years after retiring, first from my Departent, then from my lab, I felt I had to react to this strange versight. As the former head of a team, originally based in aris, whose work had, for a quarter of a century, focused on ulti-electrode cochlear implantation (http://recorlsa.online.fr/ mplantcochleaire/historicfrancais.html) and had rapidly attracted upport from numerous other university hospital initiatives nationide, it was my duty to point out just how singular and incoherent his omission was. Or, at the very least, to point out the facts. For the fact is that the multidisciplinary team of the ENT research aboratory of the Saint-Antoine Hospital, which I led, can claim riority for its work in this field, in two regards. Following a clinical research program conducted under scrupuous ethical control [2].