Editor's Note – February 2026: This article, originally published in Innovations & Therapeutics in Oncology (vol. 11, no. 5, 2025), has been the subject of a response from the individuals and entities implicated. The text of this response is available here.
The assertions in the article remain those of its author and are contested by the signatories of the response.
From Willful Ignorance to Fear Programming[1]
Mundus vult decipi: ergo decipiatur [2]
In the joy of the happiness of being happy[3] !
I received what amounted to a major promotion a few days ago: I was canceled! Cancelled, if you prefer. I felt the same emotion as when I started elementary school: I was finally going to be able to play with the big kids! Me, the little provincial teacher, I was joining the exclusive club of the canceled! Among them are a philosopher, Sylviane Agacinski, prevented by a horde of students from giving a lecture in Bordeaux because she had expressed an opinion on surrogacy that they didn't like; a sociologist, Nathalie Heinich, booed in Poitiers because she criticized inclusive writing; an anthropologist, Florence Bergeaud-Blackler, whose lecture was postponed indefinitely by a startled dean; and a linguist, François Rastier [4] , who was unable to give a lecture at the ENS in Lyon because of a student union with questionable syntax, and of course a famous writer, J.K. Rowling, who is subjected to a widespread censorship because she believes that a woman is a woman and not a "body with a vagina," as the Lancet so elegantly puts it … Anne-Sophie Chazaud listed many others five years ago [5] , and this list keeps growing. In the middle of August, some disagree with this unfortunate Barbie : "To jail with her!" cried the bearded ones. " Here is this film that I cannot bear to watch ," shouted some Salafists who have the sad habit of seeing cowards obey them.
Anch'io sono cancellato! What a shock when I received the cancellation message! The one from the teenager experiencing his first orgasm[6], of the student who received first place in the philosophy agrégation, of the researcher who finally passed a Western that he will not need to fraudoshopper, of the president elected with 80% of the votes and who is delighted to have nothing more to do for five years, of Claudel discovering God who had hidden behind the third pillar of Notre-Dame (to the right from the entrance). What to do with all this happiness? Announce it to everyone, of course: happiness is something to be shared, and I did it immediately. Then, I asked myself: "What did these blessed people do when they were thus overwhelmed by this sublime joy?" The adolescent of course started again immediately (when you are young, you have triumphant mornings[7]), the young graduate struggled to avoid being assigned to the Annie-Ernaux high school in Chaumont-sur-Seudre, the researcher photographed his impeccable Western, the president did nothing for five years[8], Claudel made his theater.
Guilt or Victimize? What if we spoke to adults?
In May, I was invited by a club of young psycho-socio-oncologists, who were very friendly, to give a presentation at a conference on Disinformation and Cancer . I had, in fact, worked on the subject with regard to quackery [9] , and I am now interested in the avalanche of fake news on the etiology and epidemiology of cancers that has flooded the media since the beginning of 2025. Honored by the invitation, I propose a title, an abstract, I prepare (and submit) the draft of the PowerPoint that will convey my thoughts, I have the announcement of the symposium inserted in issue 4 of the professional journal I manage, Innovations and Therapeutics in Oncology (I even corrected the spelling mistakes!), I offer the columns of said journal for the publication of the proceedings of this symposium; in short, I fully support this initiative. But here's the thing: our young friends have realized that I don't belong to the Good Guys' Camp! I am an incorrigible scientist who dissects articles, who has some skills in statistics, and who doesn't hesitate to go against the grain of public opinion; I had dared to co-sign an opinion piece in a weekly magazine , highlighting the scientific errors that were being sensationalized in the mainstream media . That proved fatal for me!
My intention was to provide reassuring information to both the general public and patients, after the media hype that monopolized fears during the first half of the year. Spreading messages of fear is not constructive when these fears are amplified beyond all measure and therefore unjustified. The confidence that caregivers must inspire in their patients must allow them to approach the disease without guilt on the one hand, and without victimization on the other; the atmosphere of fear maintained by irresponsible media, unfortunately followed by certain organizations from whom we would have expected better, does not allow patients to go through the painful ordeal they are going through with any serenity. Explaining, reassuring, protecting, generally seems to oncologists, who are in direct contact with patients, more positive than worrying, frightening or arousing rancor and resentment, especially when their vital prognosis is at stake.
Don't think I'm all alone: Jérôme Barrière, much more active and vigilant than me, and whom I had associated with my report; other oncologists, epidemiologists, journalists of great value, who get to the bottom of things in weeklies like The Point ou The Express, sometimes daily newspapers like Le Figaro, ask themselves the same questions as me and arrive at the same conclusions, since they have access to the same scientific articles and know how to read and analyze them. But faced with two million sheep who are convinced that "thousands of children will die of cancer" because of acetamiprid, what do you want to do? The people responsible are not the majority of the signatories, apart from the Parisian bobos who cannot distinguish a cow's head from its rear end[10], these are people who are in principle educated, including some MPs, who spread these lies to make themselves look good to animal lovers and only pursue political objectives. A female MP, an academic to boot, even told us about her digestive problems and her difficulty in expelling her intestinal gas to show contempt for farmersIt is also science that she despises, as when she says she prefers witches to engineers or when she places Darwin before Malthus.
"It is the very nature of censorship to lend credence to the opinions it attacks [11] "
My presentation at this conference was therefore cancelled: it is not appropriate to say that aspartame, in a recent study, increases the overall risk of cancer by only 15%, while tobacco increases it by 2500%; that the cadmium contained in cereals grown with Moroccan phosphate fertilizers will not kill children who eat these cereals or organic chocolate for breakfast; that the latest study on glyphosate is riddled with statistical errors; that acetamiprid has never been shown to be carcinogenic or neurotoxic. On the other hand, what is the point of saying that Helicobacter pylori will cause excess mortality from gastric cancer in Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia in the coming decades if nothing is done? First of all, Africa is far away; Furthermore, this bacterium is not found in food: so, it doesn't concern us, or rather, it has no connection with our progressive dietary choices. What's the point of saying, without irony, that women's reproductive strategy significantly influences the incidence of breast cancer? It won't change anything, and we can continue to mock those, including those in power, who are worried about the declining birth rate. We must search at all costs for the unknown carcinogenic factor [12] , preferably among the usual suspects such as pesticides and air pollution: it's better for future elections, some ultra-politicized journalists make no secret of it.
The herd-like behavior of certain "learned" societies is worrying, that of the League Against Cancer even more so. I won't even mention the Council of the Order of Physicians, which is not above a stupidity, even if it was unforeseeable. Each of the organizations that signed the second petition claimed to have "scientific" analysis of articles that they had not read! Because if they had read them, they would not be able to say the same thing, it is not a matter of opinion... Since no study has shown that acetamiprid was carcinogenic, one article was highlighted[13], from which they concluded that the IQ of children was reduced proportionally to the concentration of acetamiprid in the urine of their pregnant mothers: but acetamiprid had precisely been excluded from the analysis, which concerned other pesticides. In this race to the bottom, it was a question of who could best show that they were in the Camp of Good – what does Truth matter, after all! Most of the media peddled lies to show that they were in the right camp, not so that crackpots like me and a few others could come and show them that they were wrong! Let us eject as scapegoats those who dare not think like us! Let us not let the contradiction emerge, they say, because, if we were allowed to do so, everyone would see that the Emperors of Good are naked.
And so, three young scholars fell into the trap of political correctness. I suggested they publish the proceedings of their symposium in the Bulletin of the National Medical Association … since they seem to attach importance to this club of incompetents. “ Young people are now being thrown into the deep end before they’re truly finished ,” said my wife [14] ; but “ there are construction sites where the foreman has clearly left the site a long time ago ,” suggested a friend. “ Off with his head! Off with her head! ” cries the Queen of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland ; “ I only want to see one head ,” shouts the sergeant in the remakes of The Joys of the Squadron . There’s no question of countering, with serious scientific analysis, what two million people have shouted in unison: if they have numbers on their side, they must be right! One of these young scientists suggested I answer the question instead: “Do mRNA vaccines cause cancer?” It must be said that a few years ago, a few colleagues and I debunked a pernicious and mendacious article that predicted the deaths of billions of vaccinated people [15] But nobody cares about mRNA vaccines anymore [16] Why not flocks of grey herons? One flew over the neighbor's house: crack! He got cancer three months later [17] .
"Nothing creates consensus like prejudice."[18] »
We live in an era where everyone's opinion is worth as much, in the eyes of the general public, as that of scientists; where casual conversations are "liked" by the ignorant who impose their truth, on the grounds that they are the most numerous and that a thousand ignorant people know better than one expert; where politicians wallow, along with the prophets of pseudoscience, in the alternative truths championed by the American Nero and his entourage of buffoons. No, science is not democratic: Isaac Asimov denounced long ago this false notion that democracy could mean that " my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge ." Louis-Pierre Anquetil, in his History of France , already wrote in 1852 that " a hundred thousand people can be mistaken and silence one person who is not ." Well, it's happened! Except that… I refuse to resign myself to silence, as some would like, even within our learned society of oncology! I refuse to accept this decipiaturation : we cannot allow the world to be deceived in this way; our duty is to proclaim the truth. But would truth necessarily emerge from consensus?
Four years ago, I wrote in a humorous post [19] “ Here we are back in the days when the Church banned Jacques Rivette’s film, The Nun ; when the mayor of Arcachon banned the screening of Martin Scorsese’s film, The Last Temptation of Christ , in his town ; when the Nazis burned thousands of books; when the Bolsheviks banned works by Pasternak, Bulgakov or Solzhenitsyn; when McCarthy hunted down actors and directors suspected of being “communists”. Erasure, ostracism, anathema, denunciation, prohibition, censorship, and cancellation flourished then: a hundred flowers bloom again, as poisonous as those cultivated by Chairman Mao. Today, we call it cancel culture … Wouldn't it be more accurate to call it cancer culture , the kind that gnaws like a crab at the universalism of thought? From this paragraph, do I have an example to delete, a line to change, a word to replace? It's my turn to be erased, ostracized, anathema, denounced, forbidden, censored, annulled, deprogrammed, canceled —in short, I'm in good company; these young colleagues don't know the honor they're bestowing upon me!
On the other hand, it's their honor they've lost: they told me before the cancellation that they were being pressured. Yes, indeed! Anything can happen… Preventing free speech and silencing those who don't share your analysis—that's back on the agenda. Where has academic freedom gone? Where has freedom of expression gone? We are witnessing a decline not only in tolerance, but in simple dialogue. " I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it, " the Englishwoman Evelyn Beatrice Hall has Voltaire say . We are far from that! It used to be passionate and sincere students who got the lectures of those they didn't like canceled; now it's doctors, researchers, academics—colleagues, in short—who are trying to silence dissenting voices, thus becoming the champions of the tyranny of Good. And they strut around in social gossip, insulting those who disagree with them instead of opening up the debate.
“Denunciation is the first article of tyranny.”[20] »
Here is what the organizers of this conference wrote to me: “ Several researchers in oncology and public health, external to our projects, contacted our team, as well as the directors and presidents of our respective laboratories and institutions, by email , expressing concern that your presentation might paradoxically be relaying erroneous information [ 21 ] regarding issues of carcinogenesis and environmental factors .” They gave in to this intimidation. They thus provide a fascinating and paradoxical example of what not to do to combat misinformation.
If those who, precisely, wish to fight against charlatans behave like them, their fight is inevitably vain and their discussion useless. I will not call the informers[22] and will not say, like everyone else, that they are taking us back to "the darkest hours of our history"; to ignore these young budding academics to alert (with threats to back it up?) their directors and presidents is extremely base, unworthy of their position. Wanting to silence one's opponent without debating with him is only evidence of great mediocrity. As for these young people, they are off to a great career in the sheepfold where they will be able to bleat in unison instead of reading, analyzing, thinking, and then dialoguing and debating. But I promise never to speak ill of them to their superiors in order to harm this career: they will manage it on their own...
Medicus in aeternum
I deeply regret this eviction and I strongly reproach myself for not having been able to convince the organizers of the validity of my analysis, which is much more benevolent and compassionate than that of my anonymous accusers. Protecting our patients from suffering, both that linked to the disease and that linked to the fallacious nature of the promises of cures made by charlatans or the intrusive nature of questionable or false epidemiological studies, is the mission of doctors. I am a doctor first and foremost, and most of the oncologists I interviewed and with whom I work, like Jérôme Barrière, whom I had associated with this presentation, know as I do that they are invested with the mission of caring, and if possible of curing, but also with the mission of protecting and reassuring, a mission essential to ensuring that the support of our patients is optimal. I am medicus in aeternum, as those who denigrated me seem not to be, and who, by intimidating the organizers, led to my eviction.
