Le Pr Fournier, who has just succeeded the controversial Didier Raoult at the head of the IHU Méditerranée Infection, announced on Wednesday September 7 the suspension of clinical trials in the establishment after a damning new report and while the justice system is investigating the practices of the ‘institute. “I have ensured that all ongoing clinical trials relating to research involving the human person (RIPH) are suspended, pending the regularization of the situation”, writes Pierre-Édouard Fournier in a statement sent to the France Media Agency.
The Pr Fournier, a specialist in infectious diseases and whose appointment had raised reservations because he himself worked for a long time under the aegis of the Pr Raoult, took office in the midst of a media storm around the institute. In this first official speech, he opted for a conciliatory tone which contrasts with that of his predecessor, ensuring for example that his first meetings with Marseille hospitals (AP-HM) “made it possible to lay the foundations for constructive relations and appeased”.
He also says he is “happy” to meet soon with the Ministers of Health and Research to present to them his “ambitious action plan” which “will implement the recommendations” of the report of the General Inspectorate of Social Affairs (Igas ) and its counterpart for higher education and research (IGESR) published on Monday. This document underlined the medical, scientific and management drifts within the IHU then headed by Pr Raoult, several of whom may “regard a criminal qualification”. The Ministers of Research and Health, Sylvie Retailleau and François Braun, announced in the wake of taking legal action.
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The Marseille public prosecutor’s office announced that it had already opened a judicial investigation in July, after another scathing report from the Medicines Agency (ANSM), for “forgery in writing”, “use of forgery in writing” and “research intervention involving a human person not justified by his usual treatment”.
In the conclusions of its investigation in April, the ANSM accused the IHU of “serious breaches and non-compliance with the regulations for research involving the human person”. Retired since the summer of 2021 from his post of university professor-hospital practitioner, Didier Raoult was replaced at the end of August at the head of the IHU Méditerranée. He had acquired significant media celebrity by holding positions, now discredited, on the Covid-19, in particular the supposed effectiveness of treatments like hydroxychloroquine. In his response to Igas and IGESR, Didier Raoult deplored “a lack of distance from (their) mission which is more akin to a commando mission than to an inspection in the service of the French State”.
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