The battle over hydroxychloroquine will be played out in court.
Lawyer Fabrice Di Vizio intends to contest the refusal of the National Agency for the Safety of Medicines and Health Products (ANSM) to authorize more broadly hydroxychloroquine against Covid-19.
A request for annulment - which we were able to consult - was sent this Thursday to the Council of State and a complaint against the agency and its director "for endangering the lives of others" should be filed this Friday.
Fabrice Di Vizio says he has been contacted and appointed by Prof. Raoult, the director of the IHU Méditerranée Infection and a major promoter of this treatment since the start of the pandemic.
The two men accuse the health and political authorities of "hiding something" and favoring the antiviral remdesivir (Gilead) to the detriment of hydroxychloroquine, which the organizations and personalities targeted deny.
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"To date, the available data, which are very heterogeneous and uneven, do not allow us to predict a benefit from hydroxychloroquine, alone or in combination, for the treatment or prevention of Covid-19 disease", had justified the 'ANSM in its decision published on October 23, taking up the conclusions of numerous studies already carried out.
“But remdesivir is a dangerous and ineffective product, it is well known.
The criminal judge will intervene to find out if there are not some contacts between ANSM members and people from the Gilead laboratory [which sells remdesivir, NDLR] ”, asserts with the Parisian Fabrice di Vizio, resuming attacks that 'Didier Raoult formulated during his parliamentary hearing on June 24.
Remdesivir "has no significant effect on mortality"
Remdesivir received the green light from the US Medicines Agency on October 22.
In France, it benefits from a cohort temporary authorization for use (ATU), another procedure allowing certain categories of patients to use drugs not yet placed on the market.
"The actual benefit is considered low given the current preliminary data" and "remdesivir does not at this stage show an overall effect on 14-day mortality", the High Health Authority indicated on September 17.
If it does indeed lead, for the most serious cases, "to a reduction in the length of hospitalization, [this product] has no significant effect on mortality", indicated the head of the ANSM, Dominique Martin, in the Senate, October 22.
The agency does not recommend the massive use of remdesivir.
However, there is no evidence that this drug is dangerous.
Prof. Raoult and Fabrice Di Vizio, for their part, rely in particular on a study put online on June 30.
This concerned five patients who received remdesivir after being hospitalized in intensive care at Bichat hospital, between January 24 and March 1.
Four of these five patients had side effects leading to the discontinuation of treatment, but "it is impossible to say whether the renal failure was caused by remdesivir or by the disease itself", explained one of the co-author of the study, Jade Ghosn, at France Info.
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The infectious disease specialist Karine Lacombe, for her part, had indicated, during her hearing by the parliamentary commission of inquiry on June 25, "cannot believe that in such an exceptional health situation, there was on the part of the Scientific Council, of the High Authority for Health or the Medicines Agency a desire to slow down the arrival on the market of medicines, […] simply because there was a laboratory, however powerful it might be ”which would have exerted pressure.
Justice is henceforth called upon to seize upon this subject.
When contacted, the ANSM did not wish to comment on this procedure.