France sues top virologist for publishing alternative COVID treatment study

The French government has sued one of France's top virologists for publishing a study that found alternative COVID treatments got better results than the government's treatment protocol.

(Too) successful?

The suit was filed against physician and infectious diseases specialist Dr. Didier Raoult, even though the hospital he managed had one of the lowest COVID mortality rates of any hospital. 

Raoult was the first to use hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) in a treatment protocol and is credited with influencing Trump to advocate for its use as a COVID treatment. In April he published data from 30,000 patients showing sharp improvement with the drug. In a tweet Raoult touted his Marseille hospital's death rate of 7% for those hospitalized with COVID, comparing it to the much higher rate in Paris.

COVID treated in Paris or Marseille: we are the good guys!

Fouché vs. Fauci

Dr. Louis Fouché, a French anesthetist with views on COVID quite different from the former American public health official bearing a similar name, described Raoult's findings in a video posted on NTD News:

Raoult's protocol was an absolutely astounding success, since their mortality rate, hospitalization rate and development of severe or long lasting forms have been reduced by factors of up to 2.5. In other words, it's truly mind boggling.  And today we're obviously talking about Hydroxychloroquine, but we're also talking about the other therapies that have been undertaken and about care as a whole . . .

How

Raoult believes it to be no surprise that HCQ works:

About hydroxychloroquine, [Raoult] says that it is, since ages, the reference treatment for pneumopathy [lung disease], and as far as azithromycin [a second drug he used for COVID patients] is concerned, it is the most generally prescribed antibiotic: one on [sic] every eight Americans uses it yearly.

What?

NTD described what happened after Raoult's results were published:

France's Health Agency ordered the hospital study to be removed over [alleged] serious breaches in several other clinical trials and filed a lawsuit against Raoult earlier this month.

Why?

Some analysts believe the opposition of public health agencies to the use of anti-malarial drugs for people testing positive for COVID stems from a desire to force patients into more dangerous treatments which worsen their outcomes, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy in which a positive COVID test leads to a high mortality rate, at least for those receiving the official treatment protocol, frightening citizens into accepting a loss of freedom as the price to pay in “fighting” a deadly virus. 

Fouché, though, believes that it's merely a financial issue:

Fouché says Hydroxychloroquine and other COVID treatments have been controversial for one reason. If the treatments already exist, there would be no possibility for experimental treatments to be authorized . . .

In Fouché's words, that interferes with Big Pharma's business models:

If someone publishes studies demonstrating . . . that earlier preventive therapies are effective, this calls into question the potential development of innovative therapeutics that are developed in emergencies. . . .

From the moment you have old molecules that can be reused, at that point, the business model of major pharmaceutical companies collapses.

Raoult, not surprisingly, agrees:

The problem of these medications is that they do not fill the pockets of the big pharmaceutical companies, as both medications have lost their patent rights. The publicity war against these two medications is a war of Big Pharma against the citizens.

The good old days

Like Professor Peter Duesberg, who was a celebrated researcher until he challenged the theory that HIV causes AIDS, Raoult had an extraordinary career before refusing to accept the government's COVID narrative.

Raoult is an author on more than 3,200 papers published in journals considered to be of higher scientific quality (indexed publications), according to a search of PubMed. Les Échos reported that he is “ranked among the top ten French researchers by the journal Nature."

For more than a decade, Raoult directed the Infectious and Tropical Emergent Diseases Research Unit and founded the Instituts Hospitalo-Universitaires (IHU) Méditerranée Infection, a medical training and research center for infectious diseases. A bacteria genus (Raoultella) was named in his honor and his numerous awards include:

• 1995: Knight of the National Order of Merit (France)
• 2000: Knight of the Legion of Honour (France)
• 2002: European Society for Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases Excellence Award
• 2003: Jean Valade Prize (France)
• 2005: Medical grand round (USA)
• 2008: Sackler International Prize (Israel)
• 2009: Eloi Collery Prize (France)
• 2010: Grand prix de l’Inserm (France)
• 2011: Officier of the Legion of Honour (France)
• 2015: Grand Prix scientifique de la Fondation Louis D. (France)
• 2015: Commander of the National Order of Merit (France)