Casting error, or new proof of the scientific ignorance of a large part of the political staff? The appointment of Patrick Hetzel as Minister of Higher Education and Research is in any case causing concern among researchers. Whether on hydroxychloroquine, on anti-Covid vaccines, on the protection of patients against charlatans, or on the delisting of homeopathy, the Alsatian elected official has distinguished himself in the past by positions that are not very consistent with scientific data. In a number of cases, going so far as to defend theses in vogue in conspiracy circles…
It was during the health crisis that the former MP began to get noticed, first for his defense of the treatment promoted by Professor Raoult. In April 2020, Patrick Hetzel sent a letter to the President of the Republic Emmanuel Macron, asking him to let general practitioners prescribe hydroxychloroquine to their patients. At that time, a large part of the scientific community had already expressed its concerns about the lack of evidence of the effectiveness of this drug against the new virus. In response, Olivier Véran, the Minister of Health at the time, had decided to very strictly regulate its use, pending the results of the clinical trials in progress.
Patrick Hetzel, for his part, chose to speak out against this “prerequisite of a gold standard of the level of proof”, which then seemed to him “incompatible with the surge” of the epidemic (the number of cases was then doubling every three days). He also indicates that the molecule has provided “empirical proof of its effectiveness” – proving above all his lack of knowledge of the scientific method and the different levels of proof allowing the benefit of a treatment to be demonstrated (or not). Since then, the ineffectiveness, and even the dangerousness of Professor Raoult’s remedy, have been widely proven. At the time, as was just recalled on X (ex-Twitter) Alexander Samuela doctor in molecular biology passionate about the fight against scientific disinformation, Patrick Hetzel had also given his support to the petition in favor of hydroxychloroquine initiated by Philippe Douste-Blazy, and co-signed among others by the conspiracy theorist doctors Christian Perronne and Martine Wonner. A very strange companionship for a future Minister of Research…
Antivax arguments
Perhaps this was simply an outburst, in the complicated context of a health crisis then at its peak in our country? The new Minister of Research did not respond to requests from l’Express who wanted to know if he regretted his support for Didier Raoult’s theses. Questioned by Le Parisien, his entourage nevertheless invited “not to put him on trial for witchcraft, by taking glasses from 2024 to judge what was said in 2020”. In any case, this former university professor, specialized in management, also subsequently held surprising positions on anti-Covid vaccines. Taking up the anti-vax speeches of the time, he for example challenged Olivier Véran twice in July 2021, to denounce the government’s choice to make mandatory, through the vaccination pass, vaccines “still in phase III” according to him. He was then sharply reprimanded by the Minister of Health, and for good reason: at that time, the safety and effectiveness of anti-Covid injections had already been widely demonstrated.
While the elected representative from Bas-Rhin had asked that the air quality in classrooms be measured in order to promote ventilation and combat the spread of the virus, a measure defended by many scientists, he was on the contrary moved by the obligation to wear masks at school. “The long-term consequences worry many parents, teachers and health professionals, who note negative effects on the development and learning of children as well as serious psychological effects,” he wrote for example in a question to the government, without any scientific evidence.
That’s not all. By searching through the various parliamentary interventions, questions to the government, amendments, or blog pages of the former deputy, several observers discovered that Patrick Hetzel had in fact defended positions contrary to science, but also to the interests of patients, on many subjects, and this well beyond the health crisis alone… In November 2020, he thus co-signed a bill aimed at establishing a two-year moratorium on the reimbursement rate for homeopathy at 15%, instead of the total delisting that was to take place on January 1, 2021. A “common sense decision”, justified according to these parliamentarians by a “brutal” delisting and by the fact that the producing laboratories would not have had enough time to reorganize, in particular due to the health crisis. In their argument, these elected officials mention another astonishing argument: the “two years of denigration” of which homeopathy was allegedly the victim. A problematic formulation, while the ineffectiveness of homeopathy, widely demonstrated, was no longer debated in the scientific community. The proposal will not succeed.
Chronic Lyme
Still in 2020, Patrick Hetzel also co-signed a motion for a resolution for a national plan to better manage chronic Lyme disease in our country. The problem is that while acute Lyme borreliosis infection is a recognized condition that must be treated, the existence of its chronic version remains controversial – it is said to be the invention of “Lyme doctors” who prescribe unproven treatments, while many studies point out that most patients actually suffer from other disorders…
The Alsatian elected official’s support for pseudo-therapies therefore seems to stem from deeply held convictions. At the same time, he still distinguished himself by co-signing an amendment to the social security financing bill for 2021 aimed at “creating a body specifically dedicated to the evaluation of complementary and alternative medicines including homeopathy, as well as setting a reimbursement rate”. At this time, various lobbies have already been organizing for several months to obtain the creation of such a body, aimed at legitimizing therapeutic practices that have not proven their effectiveness. For the signatories of this amendment “these more or less recent treatments occupy a place that must be recognized by health insurance”.
Opposed to the law against sectarian excesses
By “inserting complementary medicines and more specifically non-conventional medicines into the health insurance nomenclatures”, it would therefore be a question of “better guiding patients”. Is it necessary to remind people? The dissemination of alternative therapies is denounced by a large part of the medical profession, but also by the Interministerial Mission for Vigilance and the Fight against Sectarian Abuses (Miviludes), which constantly warns of the dangers of these practices: therapeutic abuses, loss of opportunities in the event of proven pathology, risk of being taken under control, unnecessary and often substantial expenses…
Under these conditions, it was hardly surprising to find the future minister in 2023 among the ranks of parliamentarians who opposed the law against sectarian excesses, and in particular its article 4 which aimed precisely to protect patients from therapeutic excesses and charlatans. Here again, the former civil servant of the Ministry of National Education does not hesitate to take up common arguments in conspiracy circles and pro-Raoult spheres. “Scientific advances […] are the work of individuals who are a minority within the scientific community, so let’s be careful about wanting to develop the dogma of an official science which would be extremely dangerous”, he declared before the National Assembly. A quote that he would even put forward on his site, forgetting in passing that these researchers “on the fringes” but at the origin of real ruptures, respect the scientific method, and that they are not the ones targeted by the text…
Equally worrying, we discover on the X-rated feed of the new Minister of Research, which he has widely relayed during the debates on the end of life, the positions taken by the site genethique.org. However, this site was founded by Jean-Marie Le Méné, the president of the Jérôme-Lejeune Foundation. A foundation that helps people with Down syndrome and funds research on this genetic anomaly. But which also has the particularity of taking legal action against research projects filed by scientists aiming to work on embryos or embryonic stem cells, thus contributing very largely to slowing down research in this field in our country.
“The different positions taken by the new minister show once again how difficult it is to articulate science and politics in our country,” deplores PS senator Bernard Jomier, who was rapporteur of the commission of inquiry for “the evaluation of public policies in the face of major pandemics in light of the Covid-19 health crisis and its management”. At the end of this work, it was proposed to create an independent commission responsible for informing politicians on major scientific issues. “Unfortunately, we still do not have one,” sighs the senator. Will the new minister take up this issue?
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