The government has initiated disciplinary proceedings against three practitioners from Didier Raoult’s team at the IHU in Marseille, for having published a study describing undeclared clinical trials on patients with Covid, indicated this Thursday the Ministry of Research.
The disciplinary jurisdiction for university hospital staff (JDHU) was seized in mid-December by the Minister of Research, Sylvie Retailleau, and the former Minister of Health, Aurélien Rousseau, the ministry told AFP , confirming daily information Provence.
Targeted are: Professor Matthieu Million, head of the day hospitalization department at the IHU-MI (Institut hospitalo-universitaire Méditerranée Infection), Philippe Parola, head of the acute infectious diseases department, and Philippe Brouqui, infectious disease specialist. They published in October 2023 a study co-signed by Professor Raoult on “clinical trials carried out outside regulatory frameworks”, according to the ministry.
Several possible sanctions
Their article, published online in the journal New Microbes and New Infections, presents the results of an analysis of more than 30,000 patients treated in 2020 and 2021, and demonstrates the supposed benefits of hydroxychloroquine in the early treatment of Covid-19.
This treatment results from “inappropriate and dangerous prescriptions, the methodology of which is questionable, and constitutes a new breach of ethical and professional rules,” indicates the ministry. The Medicines Agency (ANSM) also took legal action after the publication of this same study which had not obtained the authorizations “necessary and obligatory to guarantee patient safety”.
Widely discredited by his peers, Professor Raoult was retired from his hospital duties in August 2021 and no longer directs the Marseille institute. The infectious disease specialist cannot therefore be the subject of a referral, underlines the ministry. The JDHU has several sanctions: warning, reprimand, lowering of scale, automatic retirement, revocation.