“Of course we are relentless,” says his lawyer

“Of course we go after Professor Didier Raoult”, said Thursday, April 28 on France Bleu Provence his lawyer. Me Brice Grazzini was questioned about the “serious shortcomings” in the context of clinical trials at the IHU still directed by Didier Raoult. Of “serious shortcomings” pointed out by an investigation by the National Medicines Safety Agency (ANSM), which announces that it will take legal action and demand that the organization be put in order.

“We are told about the IHU, it is not just Professor Didier Raoult at the IHU”recalls his lawyer. “It’s serious as accusations if we take them as they are, without putting them in a context of reality”. For the lawyer of the controversial Marseille scientist, “what the ANSM points to is not Didier Raoult, what is targeted is the staff of the APHM [l’Assistance Publique – Hôpitaux de Marseille] which is actually housed within the IHU building”.

The health authority accuses the IHU of having freed itself for years from multiple rules to conduct research on patients. On many occasions, trials have thus been undertaken without obtaining the mandatory opinion of an independent committee or, sometimes, the consent of all the patients examined. For Me Grazzini, the consent of these patients “would miss”emphasizing the conditional. “So this is the reason why in any case there are criminal consequences which are envisaged, in any case the public prosecutor has been seized”.

For him, “only justice can say whether or not there has been a breach“. Finally, for the advice of the Marseille professor, to take samples from children without the consent of their parents, “That would absolutely not be possible.”