- The Marseille professor Didier Raoult is a world renowned expert in the field of infectious diseases.
- In particular, he is being talked about for having decided to massively screen for coronavirus patients and to administer chloroquine if they wish.
- Its positions go against government recommendations.
His long hair and his white beard appear everywhere, until the front page of Liberation on Tuesday. And this, while it is now rare in the media and declines most requests for interviews (including ours), for lack of time.
It must be said that this stranger to the general public a few weeks ago is today at the heart of the coronavirus crisis. Marseille professor Didier Raoult claims to have found an inexpensive treatment to treat the sick, chloroquine, which he now administers to his patients. Portrait of a doctor like no other, who arouses admiration and hope as much as fear and exasperation…
A "brilliant" man
Didier Raoult is first and foremost a long CV. The Marseille scientist is considered one of the world references in research in infectious diseases. A world specialist in Rickettsiae, these intracellular bacteria at the origin of typhus, Didier Raoult also deciphered the genome of the bacterium at the origin of Whipple's disease, almost a century after the onset of this pathology. The professor from Marseille even gave his name to two new pathogenic bacteria he discovered, Raoultella planticola and Rickettsia raoultii.
Professor Didier Raoult was also crowned in 2010 with a grand prize from Inserm, the National Institute of Health and Medical Research. "It is a boy who can have the Nobel Prize, even launches his longtime doctor friend, the LR president of the region Paca Renaud Muselier. He is brilliant. A qualification recognized up to the highest summit in the State, since Professor Didier Raoult is part of the scientific council on the coronavirus, a college of experts on which the government claims to rely to take decisions.
Didier Raoult is today the director of a structure described as unique in France, born of his own will: the IHU Méditerranée Infection. This Marseille center of expertise on infectious diseases has the particularity of concentrating both researchers and caregivers around these questions. In a report given in 2003 to the Minister of Health at the time, his Marseilles colleague Jean-François Mattei, Didier Raoult advocated the establishment throughout France of seven "Vauban fortresses" as recalled by a close collaborator.
However, it was not until the end of 2016, fifteen years later, that Didier Raoult inaugurated his "baby", the IHU Méditerranée Infection, in a 24,000 m2 building near the Timone.
A sniper
In recent weeks, in managing the coronavirus health crisis, Marseille professor Didier Raoult has decided to adopt his own strategy, sometimes ignoring government recommendations. The scientist first stood out by advocating the benefits of chloroquine, an antimalarial, to treat coronavirus, based on the results of a disputed Chinese study before launching his own process.
This Sunday, in a press release, the IHU however announced that it had decided, at the instigation of Didier Raoult, to carry out screening tests to anyone with a "feverish" state. In other words, a huge kick in the scientific and government anthill which for the moment does not organize any massive screening of the population. The same patients in Didier Raoult's department will also be administered a treatment based on hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin, an antibiotic. "In accordance with the Hippocratic oath that we have taken, we obey our duty as a doctor," Didier Raoult and his teams justify themselves in this press release.
Positions that annoy some. "Being a pretentious microbiology professor imbued with your person is not a crime," says Doctor Baptiste Beaulieu on social networks. But when this character damages the credibility of your words and discredits a potentially effective treatment against a deadly virus, it becomes so. The personality of Didier Raoult is also responsible for this imbroglio around chloroquine. And given the context, it would be good if the Mickaël Vendetta of infectiology dominated a little. "
His opponents have the gift of exasperating Didier Raoult, as he said with 20 Minutes a few months ago, not without a certain amount of aggressiveness. "Everyone's gossip, I don't care," he said. It does not interest me. My job has been infectious diseases for forty years. I feel obliged, because I believe that it is now necessary, to communicate what I know, and not opinions, on research in infectious diseases. After what you do with it, I'm not a prophet. I do not care. I try to be as clear as possible. "
“Didier Raoult is an iconoclastic figure, sums up Laurent Saccomano, president of the regional union of health professionals of liberal doctors in the Paca region. He is known for not preventing himself from communicating and expressing very high what he thinks very low, even if it is not in accordance with national doctrine. "And to add:" One will say that he is a hero if one shows in fifteen days that what he affirms is valid. It will be said that he is guilty if the result of this study is negative. "
A divisive personality
This controversy which shakes the Marseille doctor is not the first that he crosses. Didier Raoult has in fact already been talked about in the past for other blasts, such as when he denounced the ban on the veil at the university in 2016 or expressed his doubts in the face of global warming climatic and to these catastrophic mathematical models which would be only a modern form of "divination" according to these terms.
“He is a very atypical personality, recognizes Renaud Muselier himself. He is very special. But he is always free in his head, without any external pressure. He's a pure scientist. "
More recently, a few months before the inauguration of the IHU, employees of this structure accused researchers of Didier Raoult's team of sexual assaults, as revealed at the time by Marsactu. Asked about these facts by our colleagues at the time of the inauguration of the IHU, Didier Raoult then replied: “Thank you for having described this place as a lupanar. I had a condom dispenser installed. "
This inauguration was made without any Minister of Health or Secretary of State, which Didier Raoult will deplore loud and clear when the plaque was unveiled. “Everything is very complicated, sighs his friend Renaud Muselier, while recalling that the region has heavily funded the project. How can something so powerful, large, so well placed be mounted while being far from the central Parisian spheres. But with such a structure, Didier Raoult has shown that he is a visionary. ”Above all, Didier Raoult was in conflict with the husband of the time of Minister of Health Agnès Buzyn, Yves Lévy, all on the background of accusation of conflicts of interest against the director of Inserm. For its part, Inserm, as well as the CNRS, withdrew their labels in January 2018 from the two new units of the IHU.
Questioned by 20 Minutes, several Marseille scientists exasperated, on condition of anonymity, of a certain megalomania, especially after his last interview in La Provence , in which he declared: "In my world, I am a world star. "Faced with these criticisms, Renaud Muselier makes his best lawyer:" When you are ranked number 1, say that you are the best, is it megalomania or simply make an observation? "
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