TEXT OF THE INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS DELIVERED BY PROFESSOR EOIN O’BRIEN, Conway Institute for Biomolecular and Biomedical Research, University College Dublin on 16 June 2010, on the occasion of the conferring of the Degree of Doctor of Science, honoris causa on LAURENT PERRET
President, Registrar, Honoured Conferees, Colleagues, Ladies and Gentlemen,
Dr Laurent Perret is a rather unique figure in the world of clinical science and it is in recognition of that uniqueness that he is being honoured today. Broadly speaking medical doctors fall into two categories; there are those, the majority, who practice what we might call the art of medicine - the necessary business of treating and on occasion curing illness; then there are those who are drawn by the spirit of enquiry to not only diagnose and treat sick patients but also ask if what they do might be done better. Such clinical scientists bridge therefore the space between the laboratory and the patient in what is now known as translational research - the bringing of science from the bench to the bedside, or if you prefer to go further the propagation of science into society. Dr. Laurent Perret belongs to this latter group and yet he does not fit neatly into this category because he has expanded the conventional definition of a 'clinical scientist' and thereby given the term a new meaning.
Laurent studied medicine in Paris where he indulged his love of literature, opera and rugby without allowing these to detract from his ambition to achieve in medicine. None the less literature did influence the young doctor and it was the death of a child in Albert Camus' powerful novel The Plague that moved him to specialise in paediatrics, and who knows was it the ineffectual treatment of the child in that novel that was to direct his future in pharmacology? So after his Parisian internship a post-graduate odyssey brought Dr Perret from Paris to Harvard, Belgium and Glasgow acquiring post-doctoral degrees and publishing scientific papers.
It is now that the hand of destiny or chance, depending on your beliefs, steps in and instead of the usual progression to a specialist hospital appointment, the urge to influence medicine and humanity through scientific enquiry directed Dr Perret to join a pharmaceutical company where he saw the possibility of serving the wider need by being able to provide newer and better drugs for treating illness. However, the pharmaceutical industry is not renowned for its spirit of altruism and such a course might at first glance seem unlikely to fulfil humanitarian idealism. But the pharmaceutical company that Dr. Perret chose is very unusual. Servier Laboratories was founded by Jacques Servier, himself a doctor, with the stated goal of advancing medical research for the benefit of patients by providing doctors with drugs that would cure disease.
Soon the young Dr Perret became a close and influential advisor to the older founder of Servier Laboratories. From modest beginnings this company grew to be the leading French independent pharmaceutical company and the second French pharmaceutical company worldwide, with laboratories in 140 countries, and a workforce of nearly 20,000 of whom 2,500 are in research. The company is one of the foremost private partners of the French National Health and Medical Research Institute and is also a privileged partner of the French National Centre for Scientific Research. But the most significant feature of the Servier Laboratories is that it does not have shareholders baying for fiscal satisfaction and as a result is unique in the pharmaceutical industry in being able to reinvest up to 25% of its turnover in research and development. There is another happy characteristic in Jacques Servier's persona and that is an affection for Ireland that influenced him in establishing manufacturing plants in Arklow and Waterford and he readily approved the close ties that Dr Perret was soon to foster with our country.
Dr. Perret has held the position of Director of Research and Development in Servier Laboratories for over twenty years and he is now President of the Scientific Committee of the Servier Research Group. I have had the pleasure not only to work with him over that period but also to be able to value him as a friend. Indeed my many visits to Paris, during the time I was gathering material for my book about the place of Ireland in the writings of Samuel Beckett, were facilitated by our scientific meetings there and Laurent's admiration for the Irish writer. I remember one day in particular when our scientific research was not going well and we both took solace in Beckett's view of success, which was to soldier on and 'dare to fail, as no other dare fail' and having failed to 'fail again, fail better'.
In his own country Dr Perret has been a renowned achiever in his own right. Dr Perret was instrumental in founding what has become truly a French institution, the Hippocrates Conference, which exists in several French towns from Marseilles to Lille to facilitate students of clinical science. His services to science in France were recognised with the award in 2007 of the Ordre National de la Légion d’Honneur by the Minister of Research, Madame Valérie Pécresse. In her citation Madame Pécresse emphasised the importance that France attached to Dr. Perret's international recognition as a scientific ambassador for his country.
This characteristic has been exemplified by Dr. Perret's involvement with University College Dublin where he has established thematic cooperation agreements with the establishment of the UCD Chair in Molecular Pharmacology, the Chronic Cardiovascular Disease Unit at St. Michael’s and St. Vincent’s Hospital and the Servier Centre for Translational Medicine. He is a member of the Board of the Charles Institute for the advancement of the dermatological science and most recently he has supported Systems Biology Ireland to provide as he put it "a further opportunity for Servier to engage in leading-edge research in Ireland and for us to work together to address unmet medical needs using an extraordinarily powerful technology”. Today we honour Dr. Perret for his significant contribution to medical science confident that the association between UCD and Servier France will continue to prosper,
Praehonorabilis Praeses, totaque Universitas,
Praesento vobis hunc meum filium, quem scio tam moribus quam doctrina habilem et idoneum esse qui admittatur, honoris causa, ad gradum Doctoratus in Scientiae; idque tibi fide mea testor ac spondeo, totique Academiae.