Camped at the bar, she begged the Paris Court of Appeal to “do justice”. This Tuesday, at the Mediator appeal trial, the doctor Irène Frachon called on the judges to “set the boundaries” in the face of the “cynicism” of the Servier laboratories, “on behalf of the victims around the world”. The Breton pulmonologist, who revealed the extent of the Mediator health scandal, retraced “probably for the last time before a criminal court” her fight to have this drug banned and then to help victims obtain compensation.
Marketed as an antidiabetic in 1976 but improperly prescribed as an appetite suppressant until it was banned in 2009, Mediator has had serious cardiovascular effects on thousands of patients, sometimes resulting in their death. Since January 9, the Paris Court of Appeal has been re-judging Servier and its former general manager, two years after the laboratory was sentenced to a fine of 2.7 million euros for “aggravated deception” and “homicides and involuntary injuries “.
Decades of “frenzied denial”
The Mediator and the other drugs of the same family, it is the “biggest scandal of the French pharmaceutical industry” and “it’s 33 years of my professional life”, summarizes the 59-year-old whistleblower. “I did not do this job to find myself in this room with behind me, probably, a procession of thousands of victims and deaths,” she says.
The pulmonologist traces her scientific questions, from her arrival as a “young intern” at Clamart in 1990, until her first doubts in 2007. Opposite, she describes decades of “frenzied denial of the dangerousness of a product” from Servier’s share. She doesn’t have words harsh enough for the laboratory: an “extraordinarily violent and delinquent firm”, which uses “procedural vindictiveness to muzzle speech”. At the end of the 5h30 of testimony, the defense did not ask Irène Frachon any questions.