For starters, Raoult and his IHU subordinates (e.g., Eric Chabriere, Philippe Parola, HCQ evangelist on French TV, Philippe Gautret, first author of the HCQ studies, Jean-Marc Rolain, Editor-in-Chief of the ISAC journal those were published, Bernard Davoust, veterinary professor in the rank of army general) had been running various clinical studies with homeless people in the Marseille area. Microbiological swabs were taken from all possible bodily orifices. But was there an ethics approval? Bik noticed:
“Surprisingly, the IRB approval number listed in this paper (2010-A01406-33) is used for at least 17 studies, including this one. Although all of them involve homeless persons recruited from Marseille shelters, the studies themselves vary in terms of study protocols and treatment/sample collection. The studies vary from collecting lice, treating subjects with drug-impregnated underwear, filling out questionnaires, medical exams, to nasal and pharyngeal sampling, skin swabbing, blood draw, rectal samples, sputum collection, and chest X rays. Moreover, the studies were performed from 2011 to 2020, spanning almost 10 years. […]
There is also confusion about which institution or ethical board approved the study. Some papers state that the study was approved by “our institutional review board”, suggesting that this was a number referring to IRB approval by the Aix-Marseille Université and/or Institut Hospitalo-Universitaire Méditerranée Infection, both listed as author affiliations.
But in other papers, the IRB approval number appears to be an ANSM RCB authorization ID, as per “Informed consent was obtained from these subjects, and the study was approved by the ‘‘Comité de Protection des Personnes Sud Mediterranée’’ on January, 12, 2011 (ID RCB: 2010-A01406-33)“”
As I was informed, there is a simple yet sinister reason for this confusion. Until 2010, Raoult used to obtain his ethical approvals from the local Marseille office of ‘‘Comité de Protection des Personnes Sud Mediterranée’’, who (probably literally) had been licking his rectal orifice. But in 2010, a new law in France stipulated that ethics approvals for clinical studies must be obtained externally, from a randomly assigned Comité in France. So what did Raoult do? Starting from 2010, he simply used that same old 2010-A01406-33 ethics approval for all new clinical trials. The crook never had any real ethics approval for all these many studies he did with the homeless people, for a decade!
Is this illegal? Yes. Can one go to jail for it? Yes. Does this apply to Didier Raoult? No, of course not, this is France after all.
At some point, Raoult stopped giving a flying toss about pretending to apply for ethics approvals. He became his own authority.
