“With me, the ego is indeed oversized. I see it, sometimes I regret it, because as far as I can remember, it has often aroused the worst jealousies towards me”. Didier Raoult, the return… From the first pages of his autobiography, which is published today by Éditions Michel Lafon, he is back as he is: divisive, loud-mouthed, incredibly imbued with himself. Throughout these 329 pages, fans will continue to find it brilliant, disruptive, visionary. His detractors will consider him more megalomaniac and dangerous than ever. New Pastor or charlatan? Whether we jeer or adulate him, it doesn’t matter to him: the former director of the Mediterranean University Hospital Institute (IHU) wants people to talk regarding him.
“The man who scares despite himself”
And it has been more than three years since the microbiologist, who has become a world star, has succeeded in doing so. In all registers. Nobelizable future propelled onto the media scene in the Covid panic, praised and instrumentalized by politicians of all stripes (Philippot, Trump and Bolsonaro included), acclaimed by conspirators of all stripes, then descended into hell, pilloried and disavowed by the scientific community following the revelations of the deviant methods implemented at the IHU, Didier Raoult is still there. Unshakable, he intends to continue his civilizing work. Aware of “outstanding abilities with which nature (has) endowed it”he consoles himself for ingratitude: “France has always maintained an ambivalence, giving birth to pure geniuses within it before condemning them to a kind of destructive madness”.
Find “extracts” from his book: “The exceptional potential that is mine”, selected pieces from the autobiography of Didier Raoult
In the first chapters of this opus written with the journalist Hervé Vaudoit, Didier Raoult “this man who scares despite himself“, lies down on the couch and dwells on his family romance. His childhood in Dakar, his military doctor and resistant father, his mother (almost) engaged to Henri de Montherlant, his grandfather Croix de guerre. And even, says- we at his house, “a great-grandmother descending from a bastard child of Henri de La Rochejaquelein, general of the Vendée armies“.
In this “hero family“, the little Didier, adorned with all the gifts, knew how to find his place. Undisciplined teenager, he shines “already with a certain eloquence, which will end up harming (him)“. His journey as an adventurer will take him from the decks of an ocean liner where he embarks in simple foam, to the benches of the Marseille medical school, then to the Houphouët-Boigny hospital, where he directs his first research.
Let’s move on from the story of his laboratory prowess, the extraordinary collection of viruses and bacteria to which he sometimes gave his name, his fabulous capacities as a clinician, to enter the final episodes of the Raoultian epic: this crisis of Covid that got him through, he says, “from popularity to hate“. Management of the pandemic, remdesivir, conflicts of interest, Big Pharma: for once, Raoult does not play with words and ambiguities. Contrary to scientific consensus, he continues to defend tooth and nail the effectiveness of the hydroxychloroquine in the treatment of Covid. Without detours, it smashes the “global vaccine blitzkrieg strategy“, for which he attributes responsibility to “a particularly gifted computer engineer, Bill Gates“. Became “with (his) defense, an icon of conspiracy theorists and antivax, all classified on the far right“, here he is crucified by the government. Too bad: Emmanuel and Brigitte Macron appreciated his work so much… Adored on social networks, but harassed by stupid media and ignorant journalists (the author of these lines does not escape his wrath), Didier Raoult unfolds his martyrology. Only the “caring” Cyril Hanouna finds grace in his eyes. Considering himself the victim of a “violent and unprecedented medical and scientific censorship“, he carefully hides the damning conclusions of the IGAS report pointing to scientific practices liable to criminal prosecution. Alone and standing in front of the cabal, no questioning, even the most minimal, comes to qualify his remarks.
lead or disturb
More instructive are the passages on the IHU, the careers that there are “done“, “the homogeneous team” and the “complicity of spirits” that he constituted. Retired since September, Raoult still haunts the premises and the spirits. His presence, made possible by a post of professor emeritus, makes it very difficult today to restore order required by the authorities. Lack of being able to direct, Raoult disturbs.Last week, his pre-print publication (posted on Twitter) of an improbable new study extolling the merits of hydroxychloroquine came to taunt the ANSM inspectors, on a follow-up mission at the IHU. Where today is held a board of directors supposed to decide on new changes. Here, it is precisely the day when Raoult releases his book, observed evil spirits. The expression, no doubt, of new jealousies…
