The Repression Against Prof. Didier Raoult Begins
Tue 9:40 am +01:00, 27 Oct 2020
ER Editor: The war to lock us down unnecessarily, crash the economy, and deliver as many tax dollars to Big Pharma for dubious new drugs like the virtually useless but very expensive Remdesivir goes on unabated in France.
Marseille’s Didier Raoult, an advocate of the cheap hydroxychloroquine drug, keeps speaking out against this, becoming his own symbol of the Gilets Jaunes-type of France the French Government and the World Economic Forum (Schwab mentions them by name in his publications) would like to wish away. Businessman and publisher, Eric Verhaeghe warns against the political wisdom of pushing Ordinary France, who is squarely behind Raoult, too far.
Prominent Paris physician Prof. Christian Perronne, mentioned below and similarly critical of the government, has been removed from his position as President of the Scientific Council for the French Lyme Disease Association.
********
The Repression Against Prof. Didier Raoult Begins
ERIC VERHAEGHE
For several months now, Didier Raoult has been embarrassing the executive, and particularly Olivier Véran (ER: the health minister since February), with whom he has maintained execrable relations (of public notoriety). This time, the minister has visibly succeeded in convincing the executive power as a whole to carry out a severe repression against the Marseille scientist. This authoritarian reaction is a very dangerous gamble…
The Didier Raoult phenomenon is now a kind of counter-power in France.
The Marseilles scientist, with his slightly crazy charisma, has crystallized on his image and on his person a whole French aspiration for a renewal of the elites. Since Friday (Oct 23), a very reckless and clumsy repression has fallen upon him. Olivier Véran’s rigidity risks doing political damage, and we are not sure that the Minister has understood this.
Translation: Dominique Martin, director of ANSM, refuses a temporary use authorization for hydroxychloroquine but authorises promotional materials to be sent by Gilead for Remdesivir and organizes free distribution of it. Double standards.
Didier Raoult, that annoying counter-power
As the weeks went by, Didier Raoult’s pronouncements became very embarrassing for the government. There is now the official analysis in Paris, and the word from Marseille, which say the opposite, that the government speaks of a health emergency, while Didier Raoult assures everyone that the situation is less dramatic than it is said to be. That the government orders a lockdown or almost a lockdown in Marseilles, and the word of Didier Raoult is invoked to contest it.
There are now two France’s that have been drawn, that of Olivier Véran, Gilead and Remdesivir, who decide from Paris, preferably without consulting anyone except for a few authorized white coats. And there is peripheral France (ER: a reference to the Yellow Vests and French life that is not centered in Paris), that of hydroxychloroquine and skepticism, whose capital is Marseille. Between these two Frances, the gap is widening, largely under the blows of Olivier Véran’s pickaxe and a government out of touch with reality.
It is not certain that the strong manner in which the minister has handled the Raoult dossier is totally struck from the corner of common sense… because the balance of power is in fact uncertain.
No temporary authorization for hydroxychloroquine
On Friday, the French Drug Agency refused to issue a temporary recommendation for use (RTU) to the IHU of Marseille led by Didier Raoult for hydroxychloroquine. In other words, if the IHU continues to prescribe hydroxychloroquine against the coronavirus, it will do so outside of the marketing authorization and at the patient’s expense. The decision of the Agence du Médicament has the effect of preventing reimbursement by health insurance, but does not prevent the IHU from prescribing.
At the same time, and in a tweet quoted above, the government reimburses Gilead’s Remdesivir, which is much more expensive and whose effectiveness has not been better demonstrated than that of hydroxychloroquine. (ER: See this recent Zerohedge report titled FDA Approves Gilead’s Remdesivir To Treat COVID-19 Despite Data Showing Drug Doesn’t Work)
This double standard obviously raises a political storm (including a strong reaction from Renaud Muselier – ER: longtime French politician for the Marseille area) even though the French Drug Agency was careful to justify its decision in seven pages and did not close the door to a temporary recommendation on the assumption that the IHU would provide conclusive scientific studies.
The problem is that the antagonism is so virulent between the Parisian institutions and the Marseilles institute that the precautions taken by the Agence du Médicament seem quite inaudible.
The Facebook group ” Didier Raoult ” deactivated this weekend
To top it all off, this weekend Facebook deactivated the 500,000-member group created in support of Didier Raoult. No explanation was given by the American social network for this unilateral decision, as usual. In the silence of this authoritarian deactivation, minds should not be long in suspecting the government of having acted behind the scenes to silence awkward opponents.
As it stands, there is no evidence of this. But, in any case, this kind of Chinese-style decision should not help to calm spirits. Or how to turn a scientific controversy into a political explosion and irreconcilable rift between the French.
Translation: The Order of Doctors treats Prof. Raoult like all the other doctors listed in the register. Notoriety changes nothing in the deontology of things. Prof. Raout is currently in a situation in which the institution has called on him and is going to be required to take a certain number of decisions.
Raoult sanctioned by the Order of Physicians?
The repression against Didier Raoult should not stop there. In an interview given to Egora, the President of the Order of Doctors, Patrick Bouet, whose words we quote above, announced a cascade of disciplinary proceedings against doctors who express themselves in the press. He makes no secret of his intention to sanction Profs. Didier Raoult and Christian Perrone, who oppose the government and put forward their point of view publicly.
This is a measure of the additional risk taken by the institution in this strategy of power struggle. A Raoult sanctioned by his Order (need we recall that this Order was created by Vichy? – ER: the French regime that was sympathetic to the Nazis during WWII) would definitively become the symbol of resistance to decisions taken in Paris without consultation and without the possibility of discussing them. In this kind of strategy, it is better to make sure in advance that the balance of power is in favor of the sanctioner… otherwise the disciplinary decision opens the door to many ‘adventures’.
Pharmacists overwhelmed by new demands
While the government has fixated itself on hydroxychloroquine and conscientiously, methodically transforms Didier Raoult into a martyr of neo-Jacobinism, pharmacists see patients arriving with prescriptions for new molecules that we listed last week. The phenomenon worries the Order of Pharmacists (COVID is definitely giving these creations of Pétain (ER: the leader of pro-Nazi Vichy regime) a hard time), which wants to take control of the situation. It would be a question of registering all patients who would use molecules (ER: like hydroxychloroquine) not recommended by the government.
