Paris (AFP)

"We should have ...", "it should have": the former number 2 Servier group, Jean-Philippe Seta, expressed some regret Thursday at the trial of the health scandal of the Mediator, but trying to minimize its role and finding excuses to the pharmaceutical company.

"I am crushed, upset by this procession of tragedies," said the defendant at the helm. The 66-year-old man, dark suit, has the assured voice of the chief he has been, his hands resting on the desk.

Jean-Philippe Seta is the main defendant among the natural persons: he incurs five years of prison, judged notably for "involuntary homicide", "involuntary injuries" and "deception on the risks inherent in the use of the Mediator". This drug, marketed between 1976 and 2009, is held responsible for hundreds of deaths.

Mr. Seta, son and grandson of a doctor, began his audition by describing his rise in the Servier laboratories, where he entered in 1984. He was considered to be the right arm of Jacques Servier, the all-powerful head of the laboratories who died in 2014.

If he admits to being number 2, he says there were "six numbers 2". He also denies having been part of the "cabinet of the president", reserved for "happy few". And under the fire of many questions, he refers to Emmanuel Canet, representative of the laboratories at the trial, because he "knows the subject better".

The president Sylvie Daunis asks him about the reasons of the inaction of the laboratories after first signals in the 90s, like the "Chiche case", of the name of an alert launched by a Marseille cardiologist.

"A posteriori, we did not give enough importance" to this case, admits Mr. Seta. But he goes on: this file was not "so obvious", not sufficiently documented.

There was then an alert from Spain in 2003, a patient with valvulopathy after taking Mediator. Then other cases in Montpellier, Toulouse in 2004 and 2005. Why not have done a safety study, a case-control study, questions the president. "We have not taken the bull by the horns enough," replied the defendant.

- "Against all odds" -

"We should have ...": Mr. Seta, very comfortable with metaphors and Latin formulas, rarely finishes his sentences when it comes to expressing regrets.

"It would have been necessary to leave the frame, it would have been necessary to be anarchist" and to pass over the health authorities to launch a study, he launches, tackling by the way the Agency of the drug. "It would have been a nice anarchism", replies the president.

Then comes the famous note of November 1999, which weighs heavily against Mr. Seta who signed and broadcast. Entitled "Metabolism of the Mediator (differences vs fenfluramines)", it details in a tone "martial", as the accused recognizes, how should be presented this drug.

The Mediator must be presented as "radically different" fenfluramines, clear Ponderal and Isomeride, two other appetite suppressant drugs, removed from the market in 1997, causing deadly diseases. "Radically", really?, Questions the president. "The use of adverbs is always a little excessive at Servier", tries the former number 2.

The Mediator, Ponderal and Isomeride have a toxic substance in common, norfenfluramine. And the Mediator, presented as an anti-diabetic, has been widely sold as an appetite suppressant.

For the defendant, this note was intended to "avoid any deviation from use", prevent the Mediator is sold as a diet medicine. But it does not mean that this did not convince the civil parties, for which we are really there in the heart of the deception organized by Servier.

The president reads another laboratory document, dating back to 2007, when the suspicious cases were multiplying: "The objective against all odds is the growth of Mediator sales". "You understand, Mr. Seta, that this has a particular reasoning in this courtroom," said the magistrate.

Jean-Philippe Seta left the firm in 2013, "a brutal and vexatious eviction" after differences of opinion with Jacques Servier, he said.

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