André Gernez
André Gernez (25 January 1923 – 8 January 2014) was a French physician, Oncologist, and Radiologist. His work has received criticism from other medical professionals as being unscientific, or Alternative medicine. Gernez explained diseases, including cancer and neurodegenerative conditions, through a theory of mitosis and differentiation. He posited that only limited populations of cells within tissue are able to divide, comparing tissue to a colony of bees in which only the queen is able to reproduce. Biography. André Gernez was born in January of 1923 in Avesnes-les-Aubert. Gernez enlisted in the military during World War II at  the age of 14 under special exemption, and was certified as a military doctor in 1944. At the time, he was the youngest doctor in France at the age of 21. Gernez established a radiology-radiotherapy practice, which he ran from 1968 to 1976. In 1989 Gernez co-founded an association, Organic Union International (OUI), in favor of self-medication with doctors Jacques Lacaze and Jean-Pierre Willem. He died aged 90 in 2014. Beliefs and Criticism. In 1970, Gernez contested the belief first established by Santiago Ramón y Cajal that neurogenesis ceases after birth, postulating that neurogenesis can continue  after birth. Gernez's theory is not held to be true by the general scientific community, as supporting evidence only suggests that mitosis of neural cells does not continue after birth. In 1980, Gernez proposed a "biological need to believe," suggesting that religious belief is genetically fixed in the limbic system. Although others have proposed similar theories, there is no empirical evidence suggesting that religion has a biological basis. Oncologist Olivier Jallut describes Gernez's preventative treatments as dangerous and unacceptable, and his curative methods as lacking in scientific legitimacy. Jallut cites earlier writings by Vigeral on the topic, who  similarly described Gernez's work as having no scientific basis, with inadequate evaluation methods, and his practices as ineffective and potentially dangerous.