The controversial French professor Didier Raoult, accused of violating the code of medical ethics by promoting hydroxychloroquine against COVID-19, faced his peers on Friday during a disciplinary hearing.
The 69-year-old infectious disease specialist was heard in Bordeaux by a disciplinary chamber of the French Order of Physicians, which examines in particular two complaints aimed at him for a breach of the duty of confraternity and for the use of non-validated treatments.
The Marseille practitioner is accused of having promoted hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19, “without established scientific data”, which is akin to “charlatanism”, of having taken “reckless risks” by treating patients with this treatment “not proven by science”, detailed the rapporteur of the disciplinary chamber.
“We are suing success,” defended the 69-year-old infectious disease specialist, standing, green sweater and plaid shirt, in front of the disciplinary chamber which sits in the west of France, far from Marseille.
When he arrived, the director of the Mediterranean Infection University Hospital Institute (IHU) silently greeted, with a nod of the head, the thirty demonstrators who had come to support and applaud him. “Raoult, our lighthouse in the night”, “Touche pas à mon Raoult”: banners testified to the doctor’s popularity among “anti-systems”.
For nearly three hours, the disciplinary chamber, chaired by an administrative magistrate assisted by eight doctors, examined two complaints filed at the end of 2020 by the Ordre des médecins des Bouches-du-Rhône and the national council of the Ordre des médecins ( Cnom), on the basis of several reports by professionals and individuals against Didier Raoult.
For Me Philippe Carlini, lawyer of the Ordre des médecins des Bouches-du-Rhône, these lawsuits were undertaken to support the “heroic liberal doctors” jostled by “anxious patients” claiming, “without knowing anything about it”, a treatment with hydroxychloroquine, based solely “on the words of an eminent scientist from Marseille, issued without any caution” on TV sets and social networks.
“It is the doctors who complain about us, not the patients” retorted Didier Raoult, assuring that he had received “more than 600,000 patients” within the IHU during the health crisis, “without any complaint”.
In front of his peers, the professor maintained “the success” of his treatment despite the lack of effect proven even today.
The disciplinary chamber, chaired by an administrative magistrate, can decide on sanctions against the Marseille infectious disease specialist ranging from a simple warning to radiation, including temporary suspension.
It must deliver its decision between 15 days and eight weeks after the hearing.
Since the end of October, Professor Raoult’s IHU has been caught up in a controversy again, after accusations of illegal clinical trials against tuberculosis, which he denies.