When the official reports follow on, which measure, weight up, assess our rights and duties in relation to the human embryo, a lot of questions are posed, but a few answers are given. As if this succession of reports from the Agency of Biomedicine, the OPECST (Parliamentary Office for the evaluation of choices in science and technology), the State Council,… threw, with their indecision, into confusion the contours of humanity and consequently, our judgement.
Antoine Beauquier offers us his first novel, an incarnate story, which helps us to recover. An unexpected thriller in which the author leads his characters in the heart of an enigma where the fates interlace: patient waiting for treatment, criminal defence lawyer, monk forced to silence, young pregnant women, frozen embryos, professors in medicine, shameless business men… Of course we hope Etienne Dumanoir gets better as soon as possible and everybody is glad of the announcement of a possible treatment. We tremble with sweet Sarah for the young women in difficulties her house welcomes. We listen, with emotion, in the silence, to the mysterious voice of the voiceless people. And then death comes for no apparent reason. And yet… was it not foreseeable? With all these mixed fates of life and death? Sarah, generous and concrete, understood and warns the reader: “Beware of men who are not sure to sufficiently love.” But will the police superintendent understand? So many lives are challenged… A deeply human novel where the responsibility of physicians and researchers engage that of patients, where listening to people saves many lives when the silence of other people condemns some. A novel to read absolutely to put a face on laws sometimes disincarnate.
Ref: Pavillon 7, Antoine Beauquier ; éd. du Jubilé, décembre 2009.