Under the direction of Didier Raoult, the Institute tested a combination of four drugs whose joint effectiveness had never been evaluated, causing several bass complications in several patients.
This is a new element in the already heavy file of the Hospital-University Institute (IHU) of Marseille. For several years, the IHU has been conducting, under the direction of the controversial professor Didier Raoult, irregular clinical trials on treatment against tuberculosis, written Mediapart , Friday 22 October.
“Since 2017”, the IHU “has a wild experimentation against tuberculosis, causing several patients, including a 17-year-old minor, serious complications,” says the newspaper, who quotes several employees from the Institute under covered with anonymity. This experiment was “initiated by its director, Didier Raoult, and his deputy, Michel Drancourt”, says Mediapart.
According to the site, which also focuses on exchanges of e-mails and reports of hospitalizations, IHU teams tested a combination of four drugs whose joint effectiveness had never been evaluated.
These tests were conducted despite the refusal of the National Medicine Safety Agency, the ANSM, which must give its downstream to research requiring experiments on human beings, in particular the clinical trials of drugs.
Several studies conducted in a “not eligible” way
In questioned by the France-Presse agency, the IHU of Marseille did not answer in the immediate future. The ANSM, without mentioning these tests in particular, acknowledged that several studies had been carried out in an “not eligible” manner by the organization, and said they have engaged “adequate suites”, without more precision.
Mediapart’s information is added to revelations published during the summer by the express , according to which many studies conducted at IHU have been freed for years of the rules framing the experiences made on human beings.
The IHU and Mr. Raoult have met with a strong media aura at the beginning of the Pandemic of Covid-19, in 2020, promoting hydroxychloroquine as the treatment of the disease, despite the lack of proven effect. Several studies have been carried out by the IHU to affirm the interest of this treatment, but they have suffered a criticism of many scientists as to their methodology and their conditions of realization.
More recently, Mr. Raoult has been criticized for advertising a Brazilian study defending treatment based on hydroxycholoroquine, while these tests then provoked a vast scandal for being conducted on patients without their consent, and for giving rise to the publication of truncated results.