Paris (AFP)

"The first responsible is Servier": the former Minister of Health Xavier Bertrand denounced Thursday in Paris at the trial of the Mediator case a "desire to conceal" and the "maneuvers" of the pharmaceutical group, having led according to him to this health scandal.

Xavier Bertrand arrived two days ago at the Ministry of Health, in November 2010, when the scandal broke out. One evokes then "on the radio" at least 500 dead in connection with the catch of this drug, an antidiabetic widely prescribed like appetite suppressant, remembers there with the bar of the criminal court.

It is almost five million people who consumed Mediator during the 33 years of its commercialization by Servier, until its withdrawal in November 2009, due to cardiac risks. The "priority" is then to inform patients, says the current president (ex-LR) of the Hauts-de-France region.

To "shed light on the tragedy", the Minister diligently the General Inspectorate of Social Affairs (Igas). The inspection report, submitted in January 2011, is overwhelming for the laboratory - which deeming it "biased" wanted to keep it out of the debate - but also for the drug system, which has "seriously" failed, stresses M. Bertrand.

A series of measures will be taken to reform the drug system, aimed at greater transparency between experts and laboratories.

The National Agency for the Safety of Medicines and Health Products (Afssaps) was removed from the map and replaced in 2012 by the ANSM, also on the defendants' bench.

- "Accusator!" -

After this police presentation, the tone rises quickly between the former minister and the lawyers of the laboratories, who called him as a witness. Spikes and lines of irony fuse in a sometimes stormy atmosphere.

The pharmaceutical group accuses Xavier Bertrand of old remarks qualified as "accusatory" on the "primary and direct responsibility" of the laboratories. The witness "assumes" them and repeats them: "Who produced the Mediator? Who by his maneuvers prevented them from seeing clearly? The first responsible is Servier".

He evokes in particular "the attitude" of the group, which had on its own withdrawn the Mediator in Spain and Italy, in 2003 and 2004, because it did not want according to him "that any comparison be made with two drugs, two appetite suppressants ", Isomeride and Ponderal, withdrawn in 1997 because of their toxicity.

"There is a desire to conceal certain facts", thunders Xavier Bertrand. "I am not a judge, I am a witness", he specifies, cut by one of the lawyers for the Servier group, François de Castro: "You are accuser!".

"You have always stigmatized the Servier laboratories, you are undermining the presumption of innocence!" Continues Me Hervé Temime, another defender of the firm.

"But if that is the case, why no action (in defamation, note) was taken against me", retorts Xavier Bertrand, pivoting towards the defense.

Earlier, he tackled the group's inability to "assume its responsibilities" towards the victims.

"Compassion was a word that was completely foreign to them," attacked Xavier Bertrand. He quotes the words made by Jacques Servier in January 2011 during the wishes of the company, shortly after the revelation of the scandal: "Mediator is three dead". The all-powerful founder and boss of the laboratories will die in 2014.

"From the start, I had the feeling that we were going to be wandered by Servier", including on the subject of compensation for victims, said the former minister.

The Servier laboratories are notably tried for "aggravated deception" and "involuntary homicides and injuries", a last qualification also retained against the Medicines Agency, prosecuted for having delayed suspending the Mediator. Twelve legal persons, including former experts, also appear until the end of April.

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