French weekly magazines review

There's been a spectacular breakthrough in cardiological research, which should soon lead to the marketing of French-made artificial hearts.

Le Nouvel Observateur says that renowned heart surgeon Professor Alain Carpentier who invented the implantable artificial heart, will be making them available to the public in a matter of weeks. Carpentier started working on the project 25 years ago with financial support from business tycoon Jean-Luc Lagardère.

The weekly traces the painstaking efforts to make the organ human compatible, the delicate clinical trials carried over the period, leading up to the extraordinary scientific and industrial achievement.

The journal says that Carpentier’s invention has not been cleared for medical use by the authorities but, for now, it is being implanted in critically ill patients who can’t find donors. The breakthrough is being described as fantastic news for an estimated 10,000 patients in Europe and North America who are on life-prolonging machines due to an acute shortage of heart donors.

Le Point investigates the growing interest of medical experts in “complementary therapies”, which they regarded as discredited for years. According to the right-wing weekly, acupuncture, hypnosis, osteopathy and meditation are now being prescribed in French hospitals as treatment for some critical conditions.

Gynaecologists and obstetricians are prescribing acupuncture to treat pregnant women allergic to pills, says Le Point. It also documents growing numbers of specialists using meditation to treat anxiety in patients suffering from complex ailments.

Le Nouvel Observateur looks at the new threat posed by “low-cost terrorism” after the arrest of a young Muslim convert who stabbed a French soldier in Paris.

The left-leaning journal believes that the attacker was inspired by Nigerian-born Michael Adebolajo, who hacked a British soldier to death in London the previous week. Adebolajo, another convert, said he acted to avenge the killing of innocent Muslims in Afghanistan. The attackers' youth highlights France’s vulnerability to a risk it is ill-prepared to address, according to Le Nouvel Observateur.

Le Nouvel Observateur has been assessing the extent of damage it believes had been inflicted on the opposition UMP party by the anti-gay marriage movement. As the party holds primaries to pick its candidate for mayor of Paris, the Nouvel Observateur says hardliners in the movement are calling for the head of Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, who abstained during the marriage-for-all vote in parliament. This will not help the UMP resolve the identity problem that has arisen from the battle with the government over the issue, according to Marianne.

L’Express takes up the Bernard Tapie affair after the opening of an investigation into Pierre Estoup, one of the arbitrators who granted the tycoon 400 million euros in reparations for a disputed company sales deal. For L’Express, the case is a hot potato for members of the former Sarkozy administration and prolongs the period of political uncertainty facing the UMP party.

L’Express marks 60 years of existence with its editors asking about the state of the world will be in 60 years time.

There are 60 questions which you may want to test your skills on.

Under the gay marriage dispensation, the magazine wonders whether males will be able to deliver children then, if the Catholic Church will have elected a black gay man as Pope and if poverty will have been erased from the face of the earth.