She has not given up on political action, she does not deny any of her criticisms of the management of the health crisis and singles out Professor Raoult by deciphering the phenomenon of fake news: Agnès Buzyn, Minister of Health and Solidarity from 2017 to 2020 in the governments of Edouard Philippe was the guest of “Health in Questions” on Fréquence Médicale and Fait Docteur on the theme “Medicine and truth, is it still possible? “. Highlights of the show.
“I think commitment is needed more than ever in the world we live in, I don’t know where I will be useful one day, but I didn’t say I won’t get involved anymore!”. Now an advisor to the Court of Auditors after a stint at the World Health Organization, Agnès Buzyn, Minister of Health and Solidarity from 2017 to 2020, left politics after her candidacy for mayor of Paris. A shift, at the time linked to her critical view of the management of the Covid-19 health crisis, which she suggests is in no way definitive.
This health crisis, between sometimes peremptory scientific assertions and the proliferation of fake or supposed news, has particularly highlighted the subject of truth in medicine and in particular the role of political leaders in this matter. “The education around the decisions may have been insufficient but I don’t think the public authorities lied”affirms the minister, questioned by Dr. Jean-François Lemoine and Dr. Jean-Paul Ortiz on the distrust of political speech that took hold during the pandemic.
Doubts about the mode of contamination by the Covid-19 virus
It is with her scientific doctor’s hat that Agnès Buzyn analyzes the facts which led to these questions about the sincerity of this political statement. “One of the points on which the subject of truth in medicine rests is the time of scientific consolidation: during the time of research, everything can be called into question, but when a scientific fact is finally proven, it there can be no more debate.”. Illustration of this point: delays on the nature of the mode of contamination by the SARS-Cov2 virus. “For weeks, scientists around the world have explained that Covid is transmitted by droplets, that you can get infected through your hands, which has led to what we think is essential that we clean everything with hydroalcoholic gel Then came the fact that contamination was caused by aerosol effect and that it was therefore necessary to wear masks. This scientific fact was validated around May and June. 2020. But that does not mean that we lied in March or April 2020 when we said that it was the droplets, it is too easy to redo the match once we are certain that what we said at the start is false!”
The mask affair
The vector of contamination by the Covid-19 virus is at the origin of one of the biggest controversies linked to the health crisis, the affair of masks, first presented as useless, then then essential… but unavailable! “We were lied to about the supply of masks!”, recalled Dr. Jean-Paul Ortiz. Response in the form of a dodge from Agnès Buzyn: “I was no longer in business, it’s difficult for me to judge the sincerity of what was said at that time!”
But she does, however, provide some clarification on this subject: “France is the country in the world which had the most masks and the first Western country to have ordered new ones in January 2020. But we did not know that the raw material for these masks -the one that makes up the famous blue fabric, Editor’s note– was entirely manufactured in China, in Wuhan, whose province was cut off from the world for ten weeks from January 24, 2020. No political decision-maker had anticipated or even imagined this excessive centralization! But I don’t understand why this wasn’t told to the French!”
The shortage of masks… and medicines
An explanation which leads Agnès Buzyn to address the subject of the shortage of medicines which came to light during the health crisis but which still rages today in France. “I put in place a plan in 2018 to combat these shortages. At that time, in fact, I realized that the production of active ingredients, and this is the result of globalization for 30 years, was centralized in China and India… but not for the reasons we think: it is not because of the lower cost of labor in these countries but because this production is done from a very polluting chemical industry and that European environmental standards have resulted in polluting production being decentralized”, explains Agnès Buzyn. The opportunity for her to underline, on the eve of European elections, that “Europe is a major issue of sovereignty over medicines; imagine on this subject a sovereignty at the level of France, given the complexity, the manufacturing costs and the globalized size of big-pharma that we are facing of us, without the critical mass of Europe’s 450 million inhabitants, we cannot be credible!”
The Raoult affair, illustration of the excesses of clinical research?
Professor Raoult and his recommendation for treatment of Covid with hydroxychloroquine is the case which also largely contributed to sowing doubt on the question of who held the truth about the management of the health crisis. “A very interesting phenomenon”, for Agnès Buzyn who underlines the role in this area of the fear generated by the pandemic. “At the time of confinement – in my opinion it came too late – the French were very unprepared and there was a sort of generalized panic. We should have better prepared public opinion because in the face of fear, people are looking for answers and when a ‘guru’ with his scientific status explains that we have found the miracle drug that will cure everyone, obviously, the fake news goes off like a rocket We can’t blame! to the French for wanting to cling to a hope”. And Agnès Buzyn evokes, to explain the success of the theses defended by Didier Raoult, the fact that was also at stake in this affair “the provincial match against Paris”.
But on this subject she gives mixed claws. First towards the Marseille professor: “A scientist who has no doubts in a global pandemic about which we know nothing, with a new virus that no one knows about, this should have put the flea in our ears rather than reassuring!”. But also towards health institutions: “Everyone has gone to bed facing the starification of the person. All our institutions guarantors of the scientific method have remained silent! We can blame them for not having spoken up at that time!”
Vaccination and fake news
Minister of Health from 2017, Agnès Buzyn is the one who validated 11 compulsory vaccines. This is an area that is also controversial and likely to give rise to some fake news. “If I had not been a doctor specializing in immunology, I don’t know how I would have fought this battle”, she remembers. And the deciphering she does of her difficulties leads her to provide an explanation for the proliferation of fake news in health.
“The French do not pay attention to who is the transmitter of information. When the person who presents himself as an expert to defend an anti-vax position intervenes on all the media and a child who has not been vaccinated against meningitis dies, this expert will never be worried by the family But when you are a political voice, you must be accountable, politically and in the face of justice. However, we give as much credit to expert speakers as to the word. public, it’s something that calls out…”. And Agnès Buzyn deplores the “buzz” effect: “Some experts only seek to exist, the more buzz you create, the more controversy you create, the more you are invited! The buzz finds its way because it creates an audience…”.
