A search has been underway since Wednesday May 31 morning at the IHU Méditerranée Infection, founded by Professor Didier Raoult, as part of the judicial investigation opened in 2022 by the Marseille prosecutor’s office. ” It is going very well “commented to Agence France-Presse (AFP) the secretary general of the IHU, Camille Grosso, specifying that this search, revealed by the JDD and carried out by the gendarmes of the Central Office for the fight against attacks on the environment and public health (Oclaesp), takes place “in the continuity of the reports” by the National Medicines Safety Agency (ANSM), in October 2021 and May 2022.
It was following these reports from the ANSM that the Marseille public prosecutor’s office opened a judicial investigation on July 4, 2022, for “false in writing”, “use of forgery in writing” And “interventional research involving a human being not justified by their usual care without obtaining the opinion of the committee for the protection of persons and authorization from the ANSM”.
The ANSM had in particular noted “serious breaches of the regulation of research involving the human person”, in clinical trials. At this stage of the judicial investigation, there has been no indictment, the Marseille prosecutor’s office told AFP at the end of May.
This search comes three days after the publication on Sunday in The world a platform denouncing the absence of sanctions in the face of the treatments offered by the IHU teams to patients with Covid-19, based in particular on hydroxychloroquine, treatments which they describe as “largest known “wild” therapeutic trial”.
Discredited positions
In this forum, sixteen learned medical societies involved in research accuse the teams of the IHU Méditerranée Infection “the systematic prescription, to patients with Covid-19 (…) of drugs as varied as hydroxychloroquine, zinc, ivermectin or azithromycin (…) without solid pharmacological bases, and in the absence of any evidence efficiency”.
More seriously, according to them, these prescriptions were continued “for more than a year after the formal demonstration of their ineffectiveness”. The authorities must take “measures adapted to the faults committed”in particular on behalf of the “credibility of French medical research”they concluded.
Professor Didier Raoult, who had acquired media fame by holding now discredited positions on Covid-19, in particular the supposed effectiveness of treatments such as hydroxychloroquine, published in March a “pre print”that is, a non-peer-reviewed version, of his study of more than 30,000 Covid patients.