Firmly at the helm, the Brest University Hospital doctor who revealed the extent of the Mediator health scandal retraced "probably for the last time before a criminal court" her fight to have this drug banned and then to help victims obtain repair.

Marketed as an antidiabetic in 1976 but unduly prescribed as an appetite suppressant until it was banned in 2009, Mediator has caused serious cardiac and respiratory side effects to thousands of patients, sometimes resulting in their death.

Since January 9, the Paris Court of Appeal has again judged Servier and its former number two, in particular for "aggravated deception" and "involuntary homicides and injuries", two years after the laboratory was sentenced to 2.7 million. euro fine.

Some wanted to take a picture with the whistleblower on the steps of the Palace before her testimony.

The Mediator and the other drugs from the same family are the "biggest scandal in the French pharmaceutical industry" and "it's 33 years of my professional life", summarizes the 59-year-old pulmonologist, in navy blue pants. and printed shirt.

For 1h40, she punctuates her energetic presentation of the cases of the patients encountered: Henriette, Simone, Chantal or Michel, all of whom died or were severely handicapped after taking Mediator.

"I did not do this job to find myself in this room with behind me, probably, a procession of thousands of victims and deaths," she says.

"Procedural Retribution"

Pulmonologist Irène Frachon responds to journalists on February 14, 2023 before being heard at the Mediator appeal trial in Paris © Christophe ARCHAMBAULT / AFP

The pulmonologist retraces her scientific questions, taking as a starting point her arrival as a "young intern" at the Béclère hospital in Clamart, near Paris, in 1990, in a department specializing in a "very rare and extremely serious" disease, the pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH).

"My boss tells me: + we are extremely worried: for three years we have seen a lot of young women arriving who are dying very quickly. We think it is linked to exposure to an appetite suppressant", Isoméride, marketed in France by Servier since 1985 and which was finally withdrawn from the market in 1997.

She continues with her first doubts in 2007, facing Joëlle, a patient with unexplained "severe PAH", "under Mediator for diabetes", then her discovery that this drug produces, once swallowed, the same molecule as the 'Isomeride, an amphetamine derivative with appetite suppressant properties.

Then comes "the headquarters of the agency" of the drug to "obtain a suspension decision", which arrives at the end of 2009 but is not followed by any communication vis-à-vis exposed patients and prescribing doctors.

"There is such a dangerousness of this laboratory that we can't stop there, what will be the fourth, fifth, sixth Isomeride or Mediator?" Asks the pulmonologist, who publishes the following year "Médiator 150 mg: How many deaths?

Opposite, she describes decades of "frenzied denial of the dangerousness of a product" on the part of Servier.

She doesn't have words harsh enough for the laboratories, an "extraordinarily violent and delinquent firm", which uses "procedural vindictiveness to muzzle speech".

"Another example of this cynicism", according to her, the fact that Servier now recognizes that the Mediator has caused side effects but "disputes step by step" the claims of the victims before the amicable compensation fund.

She thus recounts that Suzanne, a patient from Lyon, had to multiply examinations and counter-expertise for years.

"Servier's (compensation) offer arrived 48 hours before Suzanne's death on December 25".

She then quotes the slogan of a global awareness campaign on cardiovascular disease, launched by Servier in September 2021: "+Every Beat Matters+. Every heartbeat counts. Is it about public health, or 'waiting for these beats to stop... so as not to pay'.

© 2023 AFP