The controversial director of the University Hospital (IHU) of Marseille, Didier Raoult, known as Dr. Chloroquine, is once again in evidence. The French investigative website Mediapart reveals that Professor Raoult would have conducted wild experiments on tuberculosis patients. The hospital denied the clinical trials, but the Court announced this Thursday (28) that it will follow up the case, after legal action by the drug agency.
In a video he posted himself, Didier Raoult denies any research on tuberculosis. Following Mediapart’s allegations, the Public Assistance of Hospitals de Marseille (AP-HP) launched an internal investigation. At the same time, these accusations concern patient associations.
On October 22, the Mediapart news website stated that the Hospital de Marseille had been conducting “a wild TB experiment” since 2017, an experiment that “would have” caused serious complications in several patients, including one minor.
According to Mediapart, who cites several hospital employees on condition of anonymity, in addition to hospitalization reports, the IHU teams tested a combination of four drugs whose joint effectiveness had never been evaluated against this infectious disease.
Given the “gravity and potential extent of the facts denounced”, the AP-HM, on which the IHU depends, launched an investigation on the same day.
On Wednesday (27), she confirmed that “some” of the patients treated for tuberculosis with the aforementioned combination of antibiotics had “renal complications” and “at least one of which required surgery”.
AP-HM specified that it had actually received a “research protocol on this combination of antibiotics” in August 2019, but that it had been withdrawn a month later “in light of the express reservations of the National Medicines Safety Agency (ANSM)” , responsible, in France, for authorizing research involving human beings.
However, “in the absence of an open trial and despite reservations expressed by the drug agency, the University Hospital of Marseille continued to provide these treatments,” said the AP-HM spokesperson.
Raoult care
For sensitive tuberculosis, the IHU presented two research projects “to shorten the treatment”, but “we didn’t apply them as soon as we got ANSM’s opinion,” Didier Raoult said Thursday night on pay-TV channel C8.
Thus, for Professor Raoult, who reserved his reaction to this private channel, “there were no tests, only therapeutic options by the doctors”.
The ANSM said the day before that it had ordered an inspection at the IHU: “According to our initial investigations, we believe that certain studies should have been carried out in accordance with the legislation governing research on human beings (…). This is not admissible”.
The Agency informed the Marseilles Prosecutor’s Office, which did not open an investigation afterwards, but made a “first assessment”.
On Monday, Didier Raoult dismissed the charges against his team, estimating on Twitter that “the latest ‘revelations’ are a storm in a teapot.”
On Thursday, the head of the IHU’s infectious and tropical diseases pole, prof. Philippe Brouqui, in turn, guaranteed that the treatments used at the IHU “are all with recognized anti-tuberculosis drugs”.
He states that between 2017 and 2021, the IHU had a group of 17 patients with resistant tuberculosis or with risk factors for resistance, and of that group treated with a combination of antibiotics, “only one died of terminal cancer”.
At the same time, “of the 96 patients treated with conventional anti-tuberculosis treatments (…) there were 13 deaths”, defends Professor Brouqui, who also says he is “happy” with the opening of an inquiry to also investigate “who referred” patient records to the press.
The IHU and Raoult got a lot of media coverage at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, advocating hydroxychloroquine as a treatment despite the lack of a proven effect.
Didier Raoult, retired as a university professor and hospital doctor, should leave the head of the IHU until the end of June 2022.
According to the WHO, around 1.5 million people died in 2020 from tuberculosis, the second deadliest infectious disease in the world, after Covid-19.
With AFP and France Info
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