The pulmonologist who was the first to denounce the deadly effects of the Mediator expects a lot of the trial that opens Monday in Paris. She says on Europe 1 that justice must set an example to change mentalities.

INTERVIEW

"I pinch myself every day". When in 2007, Irène Frachon, a pulmonologist in Brest, begins to make a link between some deaths and the taking of Mediator, she does not imagine that twelve years later, she would be about to attend the trial of the one of the biggest health scandals that France has known. In total, nearly 2,000 people died of heart disease after taking the drug from the Servier laboratory. 23 defendants, including 11 legal entities and 12 individuals, will be on the dock, and several thousand victims will face them. "It's a crazy story, a story of money, a history of industrial crime," Marthe Irene Frachon, invited from Europe 1 Monday morning.

"It is going to be necessary for this criminal trial to give us an answer that reassures us a little, that it tells us that what has happened is totally scandalous, criminal, criminal, and must be sanctioned in an exemplary manner so that say 'it's not possible' ", warns Irène Frachon. "How is it possible that in one country, in our country, France, a deadly poison remained on the market for thirty years, distributed to millions of French people and repaid by the Social Security, while we knew the risks since 1997, so more than ten years before its withdrawal? "wonders the whistleblower.

"Completely scary"

And the worst thing for the pulmonologist is that, according to her, such a scandal could happen again today. "I am sorry not to reassure everyone, but it is also the challenge of this trial: to bring down the masks and forcefully reaffirm the limits that can not be crossed," says Irène Frachon. "The French were terrified to know that we could give them a dangerous drug that no one could find fault with for so long, it broke a confidence, there were reforms, but finally, Servier continues his trade in medicines is 'business as usual' An industrialist responsible for the death of more than 2,000 people, we can consider that it is still reliable.This is completely scary.

And then there is this "scandal of more" that constitutes the compensation of the victims. "It's been years of fighting against a laboratory that did everything not to pay and not to assume these responsibilities," denounces Irene Frachon. "It concerns more than 3,700 victims, which is actually a little more than 100 million euros, which is not a lot, which is not enough, which is not justice. the minimum we owe to these people in deep distress.