French reg­u­la­tors re­fer in­sti­tute run by out­spo­ken hy­droxy ad­vo­cate for crim­i­nal charges

Two years ago, French re­searcher and mi­cro­bi­ol­o­gist Di­di­er Raoult pub­lished a pa­per that, at the time, was cit­ed as an in­spi­ra­tion for for­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s ob­ses­sion with hy­drox­y­chloro­quine as a treat­ment for Covid-19. And now, the re­searcher is un­der the French gov­ern­ment’s bulls­eye for eth­i­cal breach­es in re­search.

Here’s what we know: the French Med­i­cines Agency, or ANSM, said that it will re­fer crim­i­nal charges to the pub­lic pros­e­cu­tor in Mar­seilles against Unité de Recherche sur les Mal­adies In­fec­tieuses et Trop­i­cales Emer­gentes, or UR­MITE, a lo­cal hos­pi­tal-uni­ver­si­ty in­sti­tute (IHU) for in­fec­tious dis­eases that has been run by Raoult for over a decade.

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