“There has never been a therapeutic trial”, defended Professor Didier Raoult, former boss of the IHU in Marseille, on Tuesday, interviewed on BFMTV following a tribune of doctors accusing him of having conducted “the largest known” wild “therapeutic trial” on hydroxychloroquine.
About his study published in April in preprint, that is to say not reviewed by peers, Didier Raoult said: “It’s just an observational study”, adding that this study, which concludes with the effectiveness hydroxychloroquine to reduce the mortality of Covid patients, “can be used and it will be used for history”.
Asked on BFMTV about the fact that he administered this specialty to Covid patients for several months after the ban by the High Council for Public Health, Didier Raoult replied: “I had the perfect right myself, but also the others, to prescribe hydroxychloroquine”. The ban is “a political decision but which does not engage the personal responsibility of doctors”.
The highly controversial infectious disease specialist since the Covid-19 health crisis even claims that “thousands of people who could have been treated were not treated”.
On Sunday, sixteen learned medical societies challenged the authorities in a column in the newspaper Le Monde on “the systematic prescription, for patients with Covid-19 (…) of drugs as varied as hydroxychloroquine, zinc, ivermectin or azithromycin (…) without solid pharmacological bases, and in the absence of any proof of efficacy”.
More serious, according to them, these prescriptions were continued “for more than a year after the formal demonstration of their ineffectiveness”. The authorities must take “measures adapted to the faults committed”, in the name of “patient safety” and “the credibility of French medical research”, they conclude.
Questioned by AFP, the office of the Minister of Health, François Braun, recalled that the latter as well as the Minister of Research and Higher Education Sylvie Retailleau had seized the Public Prosecutor of Marseille “on the practices unacceptable from the IHU”.
Since the convocation of the founding establishments of the IHU by the ministers in October, assures the ministry, “the inappropriate and dangerous prescriptions have ceased”.
“In view of the seriousness of these new elements, the two ministries will therefore be required to re-hear the founding establishments and the management of the IHU-MI quickly”, indicated the ministry.
At the end of the Council of Ministers, the government spokesperson, Olivier Véran, former Minister of Health, answered questions from journalists on the subject: “What is certain is that hydroxychloroquine never worked against the coronavirus, alas”. “If the conditions for carrying out clinical trials have not been respected (…) it is necessary to seize the authorities. I believe I have done so in my time”.