The Senate commission of inquiry on the coronavirus heard from Professor Didier Raoult on Tuesday about his work on hydroxychloroquine.
The virologist defended this molecule, which he has been using since the spring on patients treated at the University Hospital Institute for Infectious Diseases in Marseille.
Didier Raoult defends himself.
The professor was heard on Tuesday by the Senate commission of inquiry into the coronavirus, which questioned him on many aspects of his work.
The senators' questions focused in particular on the policy of massive tests of the Marseille University Hospital Institute for Infectious Diseases from the start of the epidemic.
The controversial virologist has again affirmed the effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine, denied by a large number of studies.
Raoult "surprised" by the critics
He said he was "extraordinarily surprised" by the magnitude of the side effect warnings for this drug, a chloroquine derivative commonly used to treat autoimmune diseases.
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This speech found an echo among several members of the commission, like the senator of Hauts-de-Seine Roger Karoutchi (LR), taking up in front of Didier Raoult the argument according to which the liberal doctors would have been "forced not to prescribe (his ) treatment "by the restriction of the use of hydroxychloroquine at the beginning of the epidemic, or the senator of Jura Sylvie Vermeillet (Union of Democrats), reached by the Covid-19 mid-March, ensuring very moved that Didier Raoult had was "the first to give us hope".
"Nothing conclusive" on chloroquine
Others, on the other hand, saw "a form of recklessness" in the researcher's public expression at the start of the epidemic, asserting the effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine when only very preliminary results were available.
"Six months later, there is nothing convincing", estimated the senator of Paris David Assouline (PS), seeing in the refutations of Didier Raoult of the "ideology" and a "political posture" behind his "pragmatism " claims.
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These criticisms were swept aside by the researcher, who justified the importance of "giving hope" by the "placebo effect" that this creates in patients.
Didier Raoult also defended "empiricism" against the supporters of double-blind randomized clinical trials and other "methodological modes".
"This is how science works," he said.
Auditioned alone
During this hearing, the director of the IHU refused to participate in a round table with two other researchers as initially planned.
The microbiologist was initially to discuss in front of the senators with the epidemiologist Dominique Costagliola, director of research at Inserm, and the infectious disease specialist Yazdan Yazdanpanah, head of the infectious diseases department of the Bichat hospital.
"I can not find myself discussing with people who make a platform to say that I cheat, it is no longer a scientific discussion", justified the researcher.
Dominique Costagliola is among the signatories of a column entitled "Stop scientific fraud" directed against the "few minority but over-mediatized researchers" who "have permanently distorted and altered the image of science and research", without naming the Marseille teacher.