Patients who took a controversial French weight-loss drug that caused the deaths of hundreds of people have filed a criminal lawsuit against the pharmaceutical giant Servier in what could prove the biggest French healthcare scandal of the decade.
The medical world is reeling from a French government health warning that people who took the amphetamine derivative Mediator must immediately see their doctor after at least 500 people were believed to have died from heart trouble linked to the pills.
Despite fears over the drug’s lethal side-effects, Mediator stayed on the market in France for more than 30 years and was only banned last year.
Opposition politicians are now demanding a public inquiry, accusing the government and the state health regulatory body of being too close to the pharmaceutical industry and putting lives at risk to protect the profits of big business.
Mediator was recommended to overweight people with diabetes, but also prescribed as an appetite suppressant to healthy women who wanted to lose a few kilos. Between its launch in 1976 and its ban last year, it was taken by more than 5 million French people, subsidized by the social security system.
In 1999, a case of severe heart-valve damage in a Marseille patient using the drug was highlighted to authorities, followed by other cases across France. Spain and Italy banned the drug in 2005 over health fears and it was never allowed to be sold in the UK or the US. However, in France the drug stayed on the market until late last year.
The new French health secretary, Xavier Bertrand, sparked panic last week when he announced: “Our message to all those who took Mediator is that they must see a doctor — particularly those who took it for three months over the past four years.”
The French drug safety body calculated at least 500 deaths and 3,500 hospital admissions had been caused by the drug.
Irene Frachon, a doctor who published a book warning of the dangers, said Mediator was responsible for a “health disaster” in France. The French Diabetics Association called for patients to come forward, as lawyers prepared criminal suits for negligence and involuntary homicide against Servier, France’s second-biggest pharmaceutical company.
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