La sculpture africaine

Cette causerie inédite de Michel Leiris est la deuxième des trois conférences qu’il a prononcées lors d’une mission en Haïti qui se déroula du 24 septembre au 28 octobre 1948 en compagnie d’Alfred Métraux et d’Yvonne Oddon, la bibliothécaire du Musée de l’Homme. C’est au cours de cette mission qu’il enquêta, avec Métraux, sur le vaudou et réactiva, en procédant de manière comparative, les matériaux qu’il avait recueillis en 1932 sur le zar éthiopien, faisant valoir les aspects théâtraux que, ..

Sacrifice d’un taureau

Les lignes qui suivent sont extraites, presque sans remaniements, des carnets que j’ai tenus durant un séjour effectué en Haïti, du 24 septembre au 26 octobre 1948, comme chargé de mission du ministère des Affaires étrangères (service des Relations culturelles) dans le cadre de l’activité de l’Institut français dirigé à Port-au-Prince par M. Simon Lando. Que mes amis Alfred Métraux, du Département des sciences sociales à l’Unesco, et Mme Odette Mennesson-Rigaud trouvent ici mes remerciements ..

Practical guidelines for rigor and reproducibility in preclinical and clinical studies on cardioprotection

The potential for ischemic preconditioning to reduce infarct size was first recognized more than 30 years ago. Despite extension of the concept to ischemic postconditioning and remote ischemic conditioning and literally thousands of experimental studies in various species and models which identified a multitude of signaling steps, so far there is only a single and very recent study, which has unequivocally translated cardioprotection to improved clinical outcome as the primary endpoint in patients. Many potential reasons for this disappointing lack of clinical translation of cardioprotection have been proposed, including lack of rigor and reproducibility in preclinical studies, and poor design and conduct of clinical trials. There is, however, universal agreement that robust preclinical data are a mandatory prerequisite to initiate a meaningful clinical trial. In this context, it is disconcerting that the CAESAR consortium (Consortium for preclinicAl assESsment of cARdioprotective therapies) in a highly standardized multi-center approach of preclinical studies identified only ischemic preconditioning, but not nitrite or sildenafil, when given as adjunct to reperfusion, to reduce infarct size. However, ischemic preconditioning—due to its very nature—can only be used in elective interventions, and not in acute myocardial infarction. Therefore, better strategies to identify robust and reproducible strategies of cardioprotection, which can subsequently be tested in clinical trials must be developed. We refer to the recent guidelines for experimental models of myocardial ischemia and infarction, and aim to provide now practical guidelines to ensure rigor and reproducibility in preclinical and clinical studies on cardioprotection. In line with the above guideline, we define rigor as standardized state-of-the-art design, conduct and reporting of a study, which is then a prerequisite for reproducibility, i.e. replication of results by another laboratory when performing exactly the same experiment