Professor Raoult accused of having conducted “wild trials”

In a column published in “Le Monde”, 16 learned societies assert that “the serious shortcomings observed could become the norm“. They denounce clinical trials by Didier Raoult on hydroxychloroquine carried out on 30,000 patients, between March 2020 and December 2021.”When we saw December 2021, we fell out of our chairs because since the summer of 2020 we knew that this drug was ineffective and at risk”testifies Mathieu Molimard, of the French Society of Pharmacology and Therapeutics.

Adverse effects

It was the publication of a preprint by Professor Raoult himself, in April 2023, which set things on fire. For him, hydroxychloroquine associated with other molecules saved lives. The coordinator of the forum, Amélie Boissier-Descombes, recalls that pharmacovigilance had gone up in 2020 “more than a hundred events and adverse effects, including eight cardiac arrests (…) concomitant with taking hydroxychloroquine“.

Didier Raoult berates a “stand of fools“and asks the health authorities to come and investigate. Contacted, the National Medicines Safety Agency is studying the possibility of taking legal action.