From our correspondent
PARIS As an old man anti-malarial drug to miraculous cure against Covid-19? In normal times there shouldn’t even be room for question. Clinical tests would be performed according to the standards accepted by the scientific community all over the world and, depending on the results, the new therapeutic indication would be allowed or not.
But even in France coronavirus deaths now double every day, in Alsace field hospitals are set up, the government – which invites you to stay at home and at the same time invites you to go to vote – accused of unpreparedness and hesitation, and therefore you attach yourself to new heroes and new hopes: the chloroquine and his prophet , the professor Didier Raoult.
Born 68 years ago in Dakar, Senegal, where his father was a military doctor and his mother nurse, Raoult who grew up in Marseille and l who directs the hospital-university Mediterranne Infection, one of the avant-garde centers in research and treatment of infectious diseases. In these hours hundreds of people are queuing in front of the institute in the hope of being tested and, if necessary, cured, by this long-haired scientist who at the end of February published a definitive video on YouTube: Coronavirus: end of the game!.
According to him, chloroquine therapy works and the whole world has it at hand the cure for the epidemic. All very simple. Raoult’s imprudences and style would make him a perfect charlatan, but the question a little more complex. In his field Raoult a recognized authority, his colleagues criticize the latest releases but a researcher who has a remarkable career and many important scientific publications to his credit.
If President Emmanuel Macron has invited him to the Scientific Council which helps him make decisions in the management of the epidemic, why is Raoult not a character who has invented himself now.
The fact remains that the Marseille professor is part of the system but also plays the role of the eccentric, the anti-establishment, the genius who can make decisions when the usual bureaucrats waste time. Skeptical of climate warming, at the first news of the epidemic in China he was – like many – the braggart and did not understand all that agitation for the crown, the latest virus in a long series. Sample of his statements to Parisien, this Sunday: Has the government finally authorized a clinical test of chloroquine? I don’t care, I don’t need it. I see that chloroquine works, and I give it to my patients. End of discussion. Eventually everyone will use this treatment, only a matter of time before those who criticize me will eat their hats and say that the cure exists and this. Donald Trump also tweeted about my results, only in France they still don’t know who I am. Not that since I don’t live in Paris I can’t deal with science.
And here we touch a key that, however bizarre in a situation like this, has its weight: the rivalry between Paris and Marseille, the eternal struggle between the heart of the state and the province, the arrogance of central power and the victimization of those who will always be ready to blame the establishment.
Raoult loves to go against the current, even long hair and rings are a claimed way to send them all to hell, and among them all there is his enemy Yves Lvy, director of the Inserm (National Institute of Health and Medical Research) in Paris and husband of Agns Buzyn, until February Minister of Health. The coronavirus threatens to blow up the control mechanisms, Raoult says that if I am falling and I have a parachute I will not test the parachute, I open it, arousing the indignation of Parisian infectious disease specialists.
Nobel laureate for medicine Franoise Barr-Sinoussi says that for now it is not reasonable to offer chloroquine to a large number of patients, but in the days of Covid-19 even Eric Cantona, an unforgettable football champion born in Marseille, feels entitled to Defending the countryman Raoult: He took literary school, then left for two years in the navy, his father was a doctor and now Raoult one of the greatest researchers in the world. He found the remedy for the virus. It is a phenomenon.
And here the attack on the elite, to the system, which in France is equivalent to Paris. But there are the Parisians with their jackets and ties all well combed, while he seems to have come out of Woodstock and they treat him as a charlatan. Raoult my idol.
While the coronavirus cure is likely to become one stadium brawl, all that remains is to rely once again on the scientific method and conduct clinical tests to make sure that chloroquine does no more harm than good and does not unnecessarily delude millions of patients around the world. (and this does not prevent us from hoping that the Marseille professor is right).
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