He rejects the accusations. The president of the University of Aix-Marseille, former employer of Didier Raoult, defends himself from any inaction in the face of the controversial professor and assures AFP to have taken from 2020 his "responsibilities" to guarantee the "legal and ethical integrity" of the Mediterranean Infection University Hospital Institute.
"I do not want the university to be accused of inaction," replies Eric Berton, after a forum in Le Monde in which 16 learned societies of medicine regretted "the lack of reaction of institutions" to the treatments prescribed by the IHU teams to patients with Covid-19, without proof of effectiveness and in defiance of official recommendations. These learned societies had denounced what they called "the largest known wild therapeutic trial".
Raoult's pre-print "does not serve the reputation" of the IHU
This forum was reacting to the publication of a pre-print – a version not peer-reviewed or published in a scientific journal – of Didier Raoult's study of more than 30,000 Covid patients treated in Marseille in the institute he directed until the summer of 2022. Study concluding that administration of hydroxychloroquine (or ivermectin) reduced mortality in Covid patients.
This online publication "is not a good thing," insists Eric Berton, who speaks officially for the first time, noting the "hype" of recent days. This "does not serve the reputation" of the IHU, which needs to regain "serenity". And, he fears, it could even delay the authorization of the drug agency so that the IHU can resume clinical trials, currently suspended in the establishment.
Until now, the president of Aix-Marseille University (AMU), the largest university in France in number of students (80,000), had responded to the media only tersely. "Without promoting or publicizing it," AMU, one of the six founding members of the IHU, who sits on its board of directors, "took responsibility from the first moments" of the pandemic, he says today.
Read alsoHydroxychloroquine, effectiveness of vaccines against Covid... Has Didier Raoult really changed his mind?
"In June 2020, we launched an investigation of probity and scientific integrity", despite "many" refusals from experts, who did not wish to "associate their names", probably because of a "certain apprehension". Finally, two experts, who remained anonymous, noted in a report at the end of 2020 "ethical shortcomings" on the first part of the studies on hydroxychloroquine. Report immediately transmitted to the General Inspectorate of Social Affairs (Igas) and the General Inspectorate of Education, Sport and Research (IGESR), "which have full power in this area," he insists.
With the unions, the university also "ordered" between 2,020 and 2,023 visits to the four IHU laboratories as part of the CSE (Economic and Social Council) missions on working conditions, the results of which were transmitted to the same inspection services.
More office at the IHU
These documents have nourished, according to Eric Berton, the report of the Igas and the IGESR of September 2022, which had concluded to a series of medical, scientific and management abuses, several of which could "fall under a criminal qualification". Finally, in 2022, AMU referred eight IHU publications to the French Office for Scientific Integrity (OFIS). Its report also highlighted shortcomings, which were also forwarded to the competent authorities.
Today, Didier Raoult, retired, "does not have an appropriate office at the IHU or laboratory," says his former employer. "He can have no other responsibilities than to complete the theses undertaken", thanks to his title of professor emeritus obtained "automatically as a winner of the Inserm Grand Prize". As a university professor - hospital practitioner, Didier Raoult was employed by AMU as well as Marseille hospitals (AP-HM). He only comes to the IHU "from time to time", a spokesperson for the Institute recently explained.
To the question of a possible sanction against him, Eric Berton believes that "it is not (s) we business", being "neither judge nor juror". "The IHU is about people who have decided to move on" and the "founding members are more than ever united among themselves". Regarding possible sanctions against the other signatories of the pre-print study, considered by the Minister of Health, Eric Berton refused to speak, an investigation being underway on the justice side.
The judicial investigation opened in July 2022 in Marseille around the IHU relates at this stage only to facts prior to the Covid episode and no prosecution has yet been initiated.
