Professor Christian Perronne was summoned by the disciplinary chamber of the regional council of the Order of physicians of Île-de-France, this Tuesday, September 13 at 9:30 a.m. The Order criticizes him for his positions during the health crisis, during which he relayed anti-vaccine and conspiracy theses, but also declared that ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine have proven effectiveness against Covid – contrary to what the scientific community has demonstrated – or that Covid patients represent a financial boon for doctors. It is for this last statement that the Assistance Publique – Hôpitaux de Paris (AP-HP) terminated his duties as head of the infectious diseases department of the Garches hospital (AP-HP).
This summons, which could lead to a wide range of sanctions – warning, reprimand, prohibition to practice for up to three years, radiation – was the occasion for many admirers to meet in front of the premises of the regional council, in the 15th arrondissement of Paris, to cries of “bravo professor, thank you professor”. Among them, Florian Philippot, president of the Les Patriotes party, declared in front of a hundred people that Pr. Perronne is “a doctor who has kept the Hippocratic oath high, when so many others that we see on television have lain down under mountains of money, conflicts of interest and corruption”. Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, president of Debout la France, has on his side denounced “the incredible attack on the freedom of care in France”, which he compares to a “totalitarian regime”, while accusing the “media bought by the oligarchs of the regime who only think about money” of “dragging in the mud” the real researchers, like Pr. Perronne or Didier Raoult, the former director of the IHU Marseille. The spokesperson for Verity France, which frequently relays false information on the Covid, was also present, when many members of Reconquest, Eric Zemmour’s party, showed their support on social networks. At the end of his hearing, the professor gave an “exclusive interview” to the conspiratorial blog France Soir.
September 11, a work of the CIA
For more than two years, the comments of Professor Perronne, who will be retiring in a few months, have sparked multiple outcry among his peers. He claimed that the use of hydroxychloroquine, promoted by Pr. Raoult, could have “avoided 25,000 deaths in France”, indirectly accusing his colleagues of having left thousands of Covid-19 patients to die. At the time, the Covid had claimed 30,000 victims in France (compared to 150,000 currently). Pr. Perronne’s statement implied that this molecule was more than 85% effective, whereas no study had demonstrated even 1% effectiveness. Today, all the serious studies on the subject have confirmed the ineffectiveness of hydroxychloroquine, but Pr. Perronne has never changed his speech, believing that those who criticize this treatment – that is to say the almost all of the medical and scientific world – would be corrupt and linked by conflicts of interest with the laboratories. He also repeated repeatedly that the RNA vaccine would be a “gene therapy”, citing a note from the anti-GMO association Criigen, which multiplies blatant misinformation. He was, again, one of the main characters of the conspiracy documentary Hold-Up
If he was once a respected professional, Pr. Perronne is now shouted down by almost all of his infectious disease colleagues. But his descent into the irrational does not date back to the Covid crisis. “He has been a follower of the conspiracy theory for a long time, assured L’Express in 2020 the infectious disease specialist professor emeritus at the Grenoble University Hospital, Jean-Paul Stahl. It started after the attacks of September 11, 2001, when he m said the Twin Towers were blown up by the CIA.” According to the infectious disease specialist from Grenoble, if Professor Perronne has never publicized this theory, he has however repeated it several times in private.
Lyme, a disease created by a Nazi scientist and the American army
But the real turning point came with Lyme disease, which is transmitted by a tick bite. He is one of the very few infectiologists who assure that there may be a chronic form of this disease and that it could persist despite a classic treatment of three weeks of antibiotics. According to him, the refusal of a large part of the medical community to recognize this chronic infection would be a “world scandal, one of the most appalling in the history of medicine”. This is why he offers to treat his patients over the long term with antibiotics and… hydroxychloroquine.
However, a randomized study compared prolonged antibiotic treatment with placebo and found no significant difference. And a study conducted on more than 300 patients published in 2019 in the Weekly Epidemiological Bulletin further shows that only 10% of patients consulting for Lyme disease actually have it. In 80% of cases, they were diagnosed with another disease (psychological, rheumatological, neurological…). And in more than 80% of cases, the presumptive treatment with antibiotics failed. “Disinformation” according to Christian Perronne, according to whom this chronic disease would in any case be good business “for pharmaceutical companies” and his serology voluntarily “locked at 5%” so that it remains a rare disease.
He goes even further in his book The truth about Lyme disease, since it suggests that it was created by… The Nazi veterinarian Erich Traub, who would have carried out an experiment, in collaboration with the American army, in a secret center at “Plume Island”, near the city of Lyme (Connecticut, USA). The experiment, which aimed to transform ticks into biological weapons, would have gone wrong, according to him, without advancing any concrete proof.
Even Pr. Raoult criticized his positions on Lyme
Discredited, Pr. Perronne evokes “persecutions” and “censorship” emanating from the “Club Lyme de l’IDSA” (Infectious diseases society of America) and from the French reference center on this disease, which is located in Strasbourg. His words, increasingly clear-cut, resonate with wandering patients. But they also provoke sometimes violent reactions. Pr. Jean-Paul Stahl, who was brought to speak on Lyme disease and to make expert opinions for various institutes, courts, with a classic opinion in the community of infectiologists, saw a coffin in his name cardboard box burning at a ‘pro-Lyme’ demonstration; and received, including at his home, about 300 pre-printed postcards on which the words ‘bastard’ and ‘murderer’ were written.
Ironically, if Pr. Perronne and Raoult now seem inseparable, the Marseille professor did not hesitate to shoot his colleague in a chronicle of Pointin 2016, regarding Lyme disease. “He has no specific scientific background in this area, other than his beliefs and the support of his disciples, he wrote. He has no legible scientific production. He has ignited alternative theories and even convinced a large weekly that there was a conspiracy to conceal (for what reason?) the scale of the disaster.”
Fake studies on Artemisia
Pr. Perronne is also a fervent defender of Artemisia, a plant used in traditional Chinese medicine. He has thus joined forces with the Maison de l’Artemisia, an association which promotes this plant in several African countries and has co-signed with the orthodontist Lucile Cornet-Vernet, founder of the Maison, two studies which have been published in 2018 and in 2019 in the medical journal Phytomedicine. This work, presented as randomized, was supposed to demonstrate the effectiveness of Artemisia herbal tea to treat two potentially fatal diseases: malariacaused by parasites transmitted to people through mosquito bites and schistosomiasisa chronic disease caused by parasitic worms.
Rare in the research world, these two searches were retracted in August 2020, after the journal discovered that the data included was false and manipulated. “The authors were unable to provide explanations,” reads the journal’s website. Phytomedicine. And for good reason, the work co-signed by Pr. Perronne presented statistically impossible data and the Excel spreadsheets showed obvious traces of copying and pasting. All the patients were cured, for example, at the same time (between days 21 and 28), all the adverse effects of the patients were multiples of 5. And the schistosomiasis database presented cloned patients in groups of 80: the patients 1 to 80 were the same as 81 to 160, etc.
Today, however, Artemisia has never been so popular, presented as a miracle solution in the documentary Malaria Business, which is based on… the fraudulent studies of Pr. Perronne. He continues to defend his two studies made with “little money” and “benign irregularities” even denouncing “a cabal” and pointing the finger at “Big Pharma”. What further distance him from the medical world and research while strengthening his image of resistant among conspirators, antivax… And the far right.