Time.news – On December 6, 2020, on FranceSoir, while the manhunt was open for him, I signed a “Letter to Professor Perronne” in which I wrote in particular: “Your appearances on television have brought to my eyes a man whose integrity and moral rectitude were dazzling”. I expressed to him “my warmest support”and assured him that it was “a great honor for me” to address him “this expression of sympathy” and of “deep respect”.
Two years later, I obviously don’t have the slightest touch to make to this text. I am simply delighted that my judgment has led me to support, through the pen, a man of quality, courage and conviction. By comparison, how can we not deplore the fact that, in the political world, leading leaders have found refuge in a cautious silence, on the sole ground that they were not doctors? I was no more a doctor than them!
A few weeks ago, on August 31, 2022, I awarded the Legion of Honor to Professor Perronne. More specifically, in a column entitled “The Legion of Honor of Professor Perronne”, I pointed out that he was not “not just a practitioner and a teacher. He was also, he was above all the man who had managed the health crises under three successive Presidents of the Republic: Jacques Chirac, Nicolas Sarkozy and François Hollande”. Adding: “Deciding to weigh in on the public debate, he could even caress the hope of being heard. Christian Perronne therefore spoke. Even better, he wrote two books which helped to open the eyes of a large number of French women and of French people who doubted the official discourse”.
I then said what seemed obvious to me: “It was his duty. He accomplished it in defiance of criticism and sarcasm (…). He stood up to carry loud and clear a voice that was certainly discordant, but how essential as the information circulated in one direction unique”. And I concluded: “He acted (…) in line with the very high functions he had assumed in France, but also within the World Health Organization. It was his honor, and even his Legion of honor”.
On September 3, Professor Perronne therefore appeared before the Île-de-France disciplinary chamber of the Order of Physicians, which won his case all along the line in its decision of October 21, 2022.
I mainly remember these few sentences: “Dr. Perronne, an internationally recognized specialist in the field of infectious diseases, was best able to understand public health issues. If he spoke in the press about government action and the pharmaceutical industry, as he was legitimate to do and even had the obligation to do in this area which fell within his competence, he limited himself to making publicly, but without invective, a discordant voice on a subject of “general interest (…). The provisions of the Public Health Code have not been disregarded”.
I will obviously not have the vanity to think that my column of August 31 could have inspired the decision of the disciplinary chamber in any way. But, on reading the decision of October 21, I could not help comparing the two texts, argued in a very comparable way.
Professor Perronne is therefore rehabilitated, if not decorated with the Legion of Honor like his colleagues on the Scientific Council. To the word “rehabilitated”, the Larousse gives the following definition: “To put an end to the suspicions, criticisms, contempt etc, of which someone was the object by officially proving that he deserved or that he deserves again the confidence, the esteem of others”. For all those who have never ceased to support him in his difficult but legitimate fight, this confidence and this esteem have never been undermined by the trials of intention of which he has been the object.
Admittedly, this is only a first instance decision, and the National Order of Physicians has appealed. Without prejudging the fate that will be reserved for this judgment, we can nevertheless note that it is strongly motivated, and that it is not the regrets expressed by Professor Delfraissy on his management of the pandemic in nursing homes, his remarks on vaccines who “protected little or poorly against infection or transmission”his doubts about the obligation to “vaccinate the general population”his recognition “side effects of the vaccine”which will bring water to the mill of the prosecutors of Christian Perronne.