Former Bordeaux doctor prosecuted for providing unauthorized treatments for incurable diseases

A Bordeaux doctor, struck off since 2017, is being prosecuted in Paris for having organized an unauthorized healthcare circuit and prescribing drugs of his invention to hundreds of patients suffering from disorders such as multiple sclerosis and Lou Gehrig's disease.

In the early 1990s, Michel Geffard, a physician and research director at Inserm in Bordeaux, seemed destined for a brilliant career. His work on the role of the intestine in diseases such as multiple sclerosis and Lou Gehrig's disease earned him accolades and publications in prestigious scientific journals. But thirty-five years later, the Bordeaux doctor, struck off the register in 2017 and aged 78, will have to explain himself before the Paris Criminal Court starting this Monday, June 16, for two weeks.

Alongside his wife, a businessman and a general practitioner from Bayonne, as well as an association and a start-up, he will answer for deception, misleading commercial practices, illegal practice of medicine, the profession of pharmacist and that of biologist, distribution of an unauthorized medicine, manufacture and distribution of active substances without authorization...

The court accuses the defendants of setting up a cross-border healthcare chain to sell treatments developed by Michel Geffard to hundreds of patients suffering from incurable diseases, without any authorization. In the 1990s, Michel Geffard believed he had discovered a drug, polycomplexes, to relieve and prevent these illnesses. These molecules are supposed to neutralize the bacteriological antigens that he suspects cause neurodegenerative diseases. He also believes he developed the device using blood samples to establish diagnoses and adapt treatment.

But the first warnings about the researcher's practices began to appear. In 1995, the Medical Council suspended him for three months for prescribing an unauthorized drug he had invented to a patient. He was referred to the Bordeaux Criminal Court, which acquitted him of most of the charges, considering that the products dispensed were more like "allergens" than treatments. He was, however, given a suspended sentence of 8,000 francs (approximately €2,000) for failing to seek the advice of the Drug Agency and the Academy of Medicine.

But in 2017, he was permanently struck off the register by the Medical Council. He was again accused of prescribing an unauthorized medication after making a diagnosis on a patient without meeting him. This was enough to chill the scientific community. But not the followers of alternative medicine and the sometimes conspiracy theories about academic medicine. "He was over-solicited by desperate patients and took a criminal risk to help them. But there is no challenge to public health policy on his part," assures his lawyer, ^Charles Dufranc.

The investigating judge criticizes this system for having sought to give "a false appearance of conformity"

Backed by the start-up Polyneuros in Saint-Jean-d'Illac (33), for which he is scientific director, and an association, IDRPHT, created to support his research, Michel Geffard is suspected of having continued to treat hundreds of patients, notably through doctors who served as front men. The blood tests, known as immuno-assessments, were carried out either by the association to which the patients paid between 150 and 400 euros in the form of donations, or by Polyneuros. Neither structure was authorized to carry them out. And the investigation will reveal that these analyses were far from being carried out according to the rules of the art.

In Saint-Jean-d'Illac, Polyneuros manufactured the active ingredients for polycomplexes without any approval and from substances, some of which did not comply with the European Pharmacopoeia. The products were then sent to a pharmacy in Milan, which assembled them into tablet form.

In her order, the investigating judge criticised this system for having sought to give "a false appearance of conformity" to this treatment, which was regularly rejected by health authorities due to a lack of clinical data and which targeted vulnerable people for whom there was no treatment to prevent death.

The practitioner, for his part, claims to have acted out of compassion. "This is a case that is only being approached from a rigid administrative angle without ever considering the scientific scope of the research conducted by my client for forty years. Michel Geffard did not enrich himself and did not put the lives of patients in danger. He was able to conduct tests that gave him the assurance that polycomplexes were not harmful. But to confirm his indications on the effectiveness of the treatment, costly phase 3 trials would have been required. No laboratory wanted to take them on," observes ^Mr. Dufranc.

To date, no patient has filed a civil suit.