The Court of Justice of the Republic has just classified the complaint filed by a victim of the Mediator against four ministers of health. But the magistrates do not exonerate the Medicines Agency from its responsibility.
Philippe Douste-Blazy, Bernard Kouchner, Jean-François Mattei and Xavier Bertrand. They were ministers of health from 1993 to 2007 and were the subject of a complaint lodged in November 2012 before the Court of Justice of the Republic (CJR) by a person who considered himself a victim of the Mediator. According to her, these four former ministers would have had “the power to stop the marketing of this drug from the date when the data acquired from science established that it presented serious dangers to health”.
The CJR ruled otherwise since it has just closed this complaint. The Court, indicates to the medical press agency, Me Xavier-Philippe Gruwez, the lawyer of the plaintiff, considered that the ministers had not been warned of the risks of the Mediator before the alert was given at the end of 2009 The judges based themselves on a report from the General Inspectorate of Social Affairs (igas).
If it cleared the ministers of this responsibility, the Court did not do so for the French Medicines Safety Agency (formerly Afssaps, now Ansm). Me Xavier-Philippe Gruwez thus sees it as confirmation of his approach. On behalf of his client, he also brought an action before the administrative court of Paris against the Medicines Agency which, according to him, was slow to withdraw the Mediator from the market.
.
