Four Years Ago, Didier Raoult’s Now Discredited Research Advocated for Hydroxychloroquine. Trump Touted It. Thousands Died From It

It was perhaps not wise for Didier Raoult, a French microbiologist, to become the authoritative face of using chloroquine or its variant hydroxychloroquine to treat Covid-19. Both drugs have been discredited as a treatment for SARS-CoV-2.
Raoult, a tropical disease specialist, is the former head of the IHU Méditerranée research hospital.
Hydroxychloroquine gained prominence in the spring of 2020, just about four years ago, in part due to now-discredited research by Raoult and because then-President Donald Trump proclaimed hydroxychloroquine as a kind of “miracle drug,” who said: What do you have to lose? Take it.”
It turned out that the answer was, quite a bit.
In August 2020, we noted that the Infectious Diseases Society of America, in its Covid-19 treatment guidelines,  strengthened its stance against the use of hydroxychloroquine in the treatment of Covid-19, telling physicians not to use it to combat Covid.
In May 2023, we reported that French physicians’ bodies writing in Le Monde called on public health authorities to punish Raoult for what it terms “the largest ‘unauthorised’ clinical trial ever seen” into the use of hydroxychloroquine to treat SARS-CoV-2.
Raoult and his subordinates engaged in “systematic prescription of medications as varied as hydroxychloroquine, zinc, ivermectin and azithromycin to patients suffering from Covid-19… without a solid pharmacological basis and lacking any proof of their effectiveness,” a group of 16 research bodies wrote in the op-ed piece.
Meanwhile, in July 2023, we reported that Raoult was facing allegations for a pattern of unauthorized experiments on homeless people.
Raoult and colleagues had violated the nation’s 1988 Huriet Law that established rights for participants in biomedical research trials. Researchers cited in the press argued that Raoult’s team had conducted unauthorized studies while collecting blood samples from homeless people in the 1990s.
Raoult’s advocacy of hydroxychloroquine eventually led to a reconsideration of his research broadly, to his professional detriment. Sadly, this was too little and too late.
A study released in January 2024 showed that some 17,000 Covid patients died after taking the drug during the initial wave of SARS-CoV-2 cases.
(Photo: Accura Media Group)