Europe 1 with AFP 09:48, December 26, 2022
One of the biggest pharmaceutical scandals of recent years is now on the boards.
In an interview with AFP, whistleblower and pulmonologist Irène Frachon recounts the creation of this new comic strip.
"It looks like a thriller, except that it's all true!"
After the film, the books and the play, the Mediator scandal is told in a breathless and didactic comic book, from the pen of the whistleblower Irène Frachon.
"The real factual story from A to Z had never been written", assures the pulmonologist at the Brest-Carhaix hospital, in Finistère.
An appetite suppressant derived from amphetamine
Entitled "Mediator, a chemically pure crime" (Ed. Delcourt), this comic strip, which should be published on January 4, was written with former journalist Éric Giacometti and drawn by François Duprat.
She undertakes to retrace not only the history of the Mediator but also that of its manufacturer, the Servier laboratories, and of another of its drugs banned in the 90s: Isomeride.
"It's an industrial crime that began in the 1960s: Servier invented a series of appetite suppressants derived from amphetamine. And, despite the signs of danger which appeared very quickly, Servier did everything possible to prevent the withdrawal of these appetite suppressants because they are extremely profitable products", says Irène Frachon.
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Similarities with Isomeride
Marketed in 1976 for the treatment of diabetes but widely misused as an appetite suppressant, the Mediator was prescribed to around five million people until it was withdrawn in November 2009.
It is by discovering the similarity of the Mediator with Isomeride that the pulmonologist will realize its dangerousness.
Because "in reality, Isomeride and Mediator are the same thing. They release the same poison in the body. Servier knew it and concealed it", underlines Irène Frachon.
No place for fiction
The Isomeride scandal, withdrawn from the market in 1997, caused a stir in the United States.
But in France, the case "made pschitt to the chagrin of a journalist from Le
Parisien
, Éric Giacometti", author of several articles on the subject, says Ms. Frachon.
It was from their meeting that the idea of comics was born.
Having become a thriller author and screenwriter for Largo Winch, Éric Giacometti helped give rhythm to this 200-page story, peppered with medical and scientific explanations that could have made it off-putting.
"I've been living this case like a thriller for years but I don't know how to tell it like that", confides Irène Frachon, who however specifies that "everything is factual".
"There is no place for fiction in comics," she describes, listing Servier's "barbouze methods" and the "frightening documents" from the criminal investigation.
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The story of a collective work
This "graphic documentary" recalls the role of the doctors who supported Servier, but also the involvement of all those who warned of the danger of the Mediator and helped Irène Frachon in her fight against the laboratory and the health authorities.
"It's very important to show the collective work behind it", underlines the one whose story inspired the film "La fille de Brest" by Emmanuelle Bercot (2016).
Along with others, this scandal has helped undermine public trust in health authorities, fueling conspiracy and anti-vaccine rhetoric.
Aware of this threat, the pulmonologist advocates to remedy it a drastic fight against the conflicts of interest which remain "omnipresent even today in the medical world".
She also pleads for greater severity of justice vis-à-vis white-collar crime, while the appeal trial of the Mediator scandal is to open on January 9.
"We are dealing with a lab that knowingly sold a deadly poison for more than ten years, with thousands of deaths. I think that deserves exemplary condemnations," she said.
Servier sentenced in 2021
In March 2021, the Paris Criminal Court sentenced Servier for "aggravated deception" and "involuntary homicides and injuries" to a fine of 2.718 million euros and acquitted him of the offense of fraud.
A sentence well below the requisitions of the prosecution.
Despite its ban 13 years ago, victims continue to die from the Mediator.
Like Cathy, who disappeared in December, just a few weeks before the publication of the comic strip in which she appears.