INTERVIEW
"It may be off-putting, clinical trials, standardization, randomization, transparency on data ... It takes time, but in the end, it may be more solid." Invited from Europe 1 on Thursday, Martin Hirsch returned to the crisis that the country went through and deplored that a form of "scientific populism" had been brought to light by the Covid, while scientific studies have been widely controversial these last time.
The Director General of Public Assistance - Paris Hospitals (AP-HP) publishes The Enigma of the Water Lily Facing the Virus (Stock), a testimony on the coronavirus crisis experienced inside the first CHU in France.
>> LIVE - Coronavirus: follow the evolution of the situation Thursday, August 27
Scientific "rationality"
"The scientists are there to show that the constraints exist, that there is a rationality. The magic wand is not part of the arsenal of the scientist. The controlled trial, him, is part of it", underlined Martin Hirsch at the microphone of Patrick Cohen. He gives in particular the example, a little ironic, of a clinical trial conducted at the AP-HP, with 60,000 patients followed from home, with a questionnaire to be completed to find out how they were doing.
“When you take those 60,000 patients, a few had to be hospitalized, but over 90% were cured spontaneously. I could have made a big post saying, 'look, filling out an online questionnaire helps 90% of cure spontaneously '", explains Martin Hirch who denounces the lack of rigor of certain studies. "It may be off-putting, clinical trials, standardization, randomization, transparency on data ... It takes time, but in the end, it may be more solid," he said. .
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"Freedom of your" vs "duty of reserve"
Asked about the freedom of speech of Professor Didier Raoult, controversial infectious disease specialist from the IHU Méditerranée Infection in Marseille who defends the use of hydroxychloroquine to treat the coronavirus and whose clinical trials have been criticized, Martin Hirsch reminded us that "academics, and that's fine, have academic freedom and tone." Before being more nuanced: "Freedom is good when you use it wisely. It has a freedom of tone that I do not claim. I find that the discussion of arguments is compatible with the duty of reserve" , confided the general manager of the AP-HP.
>> Find Patrick Cohen's interviews in Europe midi in replay and podcast here
"Insulting public assistance"
Martin Hirsch had, by letter to the President of the National Assembly, contested two passages of the hearing of Professor Didier Raoult by the commission of inquiry on June 24, seeming according to him "to be akin to false testimony": an estimate the death rates of patients in intensive care between Marseille and Paris, and comments on the first official death of Covid outside Asia, an 80-year-old Chinese patient hospitalized in Paris at the end of January and died in February ".
"When we say under oath that the first patient, we let him out of the hospital, while he was not out of the hospital, and to demonstrate a thesis that we do not work well, I find that it is an insult to the 100,000 people who work in public assistance, "Martin Hirsch told Europe 1.
"I do not insult those who are remarkable and work in Marseille, but we do not need to use false arguments. I think we will go to court, but that's fine, justice is very useful in this country. " Professor Raoult for his part filed a complaint with the Paris prosecutor's office for "slanderous denunciation".