December 18th Update: Didier Raoult’s controversial Hydroxychloroquine paper has now been retracted. Editors of International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents who published the 2020 paper that claimed hydroxychloroquine was an effective treatment for COVID-19 have reached an agreement with the authors to pull the article. The paper recieved widespread criticism from COVID-19 doctors due to the study’s poor design and questions over its ethical foundation.
Didier Raoult the French doctor who ignited the hydroxychloroquine COVID craze has been banned from practising medicine in France for two years.
Le Parisen reported last week that the national disciplinary board of the French Order of Physicians have ordered that the controversial clinician stay away from patients for 24 months as of February 1, 2025.
The dodgy doc was first reprimanded in 2021 after the OoP determined that he had acted against the interests of patients when he pushed the unproven treatment for COVID-19 at the height of the pandemic. Raoult was allowed to continue practising despite allegedly inflating claims that hydroxychloroquine was an effective drug against the severe respiratory symptoms caused by the virus and for behaving uncollegially in his bizarre attacks on colleagues who questioned his untested methods.
Initially the board took the stance that while the therapy had no evidence or biological rationale, the intervention did not make things worse. On appeal, however, the disciplinary committee have changed their position on the matter saying that their findings were ‘too lenient in view of the shortcomings held’.
According to reporting by Le Parisien, Raoult did not get permission from health authorities to conduct a trial on over 30,000 dangerously ill French residents with his actions described as ‘Wild’ by his detractors.
No evidence has been produced to show that hydroxychloroquine was effective in treating SARS-CoV-2 infection, COVID-19 symptoms or preventing the virus from being transmitted. Rather than a cheap and effectual tonic, treatment with hydroxychloroquine was unsuccessful and a waste of resources. Mass unwarranted demand for the drug put sufferers of the autoimmune disorder, lupus, at risk. Patients were left scrambling to fill essential prescriptions as COVID-19 panic resulted in empty pharmacy shelves.
As Didier Raoult is now retired this suspension is a symbolic act, however, the message it sends is clear. Health watchdogs around the world are becoming increasingly impatient with doctors who disregard the ethical frame works put in place to protect patients.
