virologist Bruno Lina warned by the order of doctors
Bruno Lina, virologist © AFP
For an unmentioned conflict of interest with a pharmaceutical laboratory during a television program in which he participated in 2017, the Lyon virologist Bruno Lina, member of the scientific council, was warned by the order of doctors.
An eminent figure in virology in Lyon and a member of the government’s scientific council, the “Mister covid-19” from Lyon has just been notified of a warning by the national disciplinary chamber of the order of doctors. Professor Lina, attached to the Croix-Rousse hospital, was the subject of a complaint filed in 2017 by an association of patients.
A complaint filed by a patient association
E3M (Entraide aux Malades de Myofasciite à Macrophages) criticized him for not having mentioned a conflict of interest with a pharmaceutical laboratory producing vaccines against the human papillomavirus, which was the subject of a program “C’est dans l’ air” in which he had participated on France 5 on January 5, 2017. The association also maintained that Bruno Lina had “lacked the caution required by the public health code” by declaring “unfounded vaccine controversiesagainst this disease.
After a rejection of its complaint in 2018 by the order of doctors of Rhône-Alpes, the E3M had appealed the decision before the national disciplinary chamber of the order of doctors. For his part, in September 2020, Professor Bruno Lina had “rejected” the association’s request, explaining that it was unfounded, because “no link with the pharmaceutical industry exists that he should have declared at the time of his participation in the show“, before adding that he only received”personally no sum from the sponsors of the GEIG“. Moreover, concerning the quality of vaccines against the human papillomavirus, he assured that he had only done “relay the position of the medical community“.
Guilty of failing to mention lab ties
Two years later, the Order of Physicians finally delivered its verdict on this case in publishing its decision on July 18as the next generation The Doctor’s Daily. This is shared.
The College of Physicians did not hold back grief over his comments on the quality of HPV vaccines, which he believes do not have quality issues explaining”it’s a franco-french problem […] there is no sign that there is a problem“. This one believes that Professor Lina “cannot be regarded as having lacked the required prudence […]since it follows from the instruction that macrophage myofasciitis following the injection of vaccines containing aluminum salts has been mainly described in France and that no relationship has been scientifically demonstrated between it and observable clinical signs“.
On the other hand, on the subject of a potential conflict of interest not mentioned during the broadcast, the order of doctors revealed that in its capacity as president of the scientific council of the Group of expertise and information on the Influenza (GEIG), which is financed by the pharmaceutical industry and which therefore maintains links with many pharmaceutical companies, Bruno Lina should have spoken about it on the air. Especially since in his public declaration of interest, the professor had declared links with the GlaxoSmithKline laboratory, producer of the Cervarix vaccine, which was then marketed in France against the papillomavirus. As such, the Order of Physicians issued a warning in his opinion.