In the aftermath of a historic health crisis, Dr Jean-François Lemoine receives the major players in the world of health. Today, Professor Jean-François Bergmann. On the “Raoult” affair, the place of France in medical research, doctor-pharmaceutical industry relations, he delivers his vision on the future of therapeutic progress. With, for him, the need to place the benefit for the patient at the heart of the debate.
Do not confuse speed with haste could be the motto of Professor Jean-François Bergmann. It is in any case this principle which motivated his interventions during the coronavirus crisis in the debate on hydroxychloroquine. Unlike Professor Didier Raoult, a defender of action in the face of an emergency, the former vice-president of the ANSM’s marketing authorization commission has decided to recommend a more orthodox based on real clinical studies. “Trying is respectable if it does not interfere with the demonstration of the proof because it is the proof which generates confidence”, he affirms today, continuing to denounce “fanaticism” and the “sensational” which, according to him, characterized the posture of the Marseille boss.
And yet, if he is demanding on the respect of his rules, Professor Bergmann is not tender with clinical research “made in France”. “We could dream that it would be more agile…”, he admits in the face of the lack of results from the major European Discovery study launched last April on the effectiveness and relevance of different treatments to fight against Covid. -19. Before supporting his point with a much more severe remark: “In France, the weight of the technical-regulatory makes the realization of clinical trials laborious!”.
Better promote clinical research
It is also on this register that he places his priorities at a time when our health system is thinking about its future within the framework of a “Ségur” which should allow it to drive out its main demons. “We have to find a way for clinical research to be better valued and, for new treatments, perhaps consider a two-stage evaluation by involving more those who have a link of interest with the industry, even if they don’t have to take part in the decision”.
Iconoclast! Even if Professor Bergmann immediately specifies that, faced with laboratories which “often speak of innovation for simple advances in the mechanism of action of a drug”, the role of the doctor must be not to become attached ” only to progress for the patient”. But such an evolution seems to him necessary in the face of “tetanized” structures on this subject, to, he says, “bring a little oxygen into all this”.
He also presents himself as devoid of any naivety vis-à-vis the industry and recalls this by evoking the priorities promised by certain laboratories on the supply of an “anti-Covid” vaccine the day it will exist. “Industry sometimes does more niche marketing than it cares about public health…it drives me crazy!” he says. In case some still doubt the probity of Professor Jean-François Bergmann.
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