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In May 2020, Moroccan-American-Belgian scientist Moncef Slaoui made headlines as chief scientist of the U.S. government’s Covid vaccine development effort Operation Warp Speed during the Trump administration. However, his name was mentioned in several other cases that date back to ten years ago.
Apart from the sexual harassment claims that led to his dismissal as chairman of a company owned by GlaxoSmithKline, the scientist was criticized a few months ago for his links to the pharmaceutical industry in the United States. In August 2020, Democrats questioned an Alexandria consulting company about a contract that allowed Slaoui to «maintain personal investments and avoid making ethics disclosures of his holdings in pharmaceutical companies».
Slaoui has, in fact, retained his GSK shares, selected in partnership with Sanofi to provide millions of doses of experimental vaccines against the new coronavirus to the US government and whose phase II was launched only last month.
But the files implicating Moncef Slaoui go back well before he became famous. Indeed, in July, American media unearthed an old case where the name of the molecular biologist and immunologist of Moroccan origin was mentioned. The Daily Beast accused him of having «helped misrepresent scientific research on a drug that had harmed tens of thousands of Americans» back in 2007.
A scandal named Avandia
At the time, a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that GSK's successful diabetes drug Avandia increased the risk of heart attacks and deaths in patients. Moncef Slaoui, then president of research and development for GSK, would have thus «helped the company» in its deception to convince the health authorities of the safety of its drug and to minimize its risks.
«He offered a rosy assessment that downplayed the drug’s risks», wrote The Daily Beast. Reports from a commission set up by the US Senate then revealed that «GSK had bullied critics of the drug, hid data, and misled the public».
«Not only is Avandia effective, it is actually superior to the most widely used medicines. We also diligently communicated to physicians and patients Avandia's scientifically established safety risks», Slaoui said.
At the time, the New York Times had reported an email from the Moroccan-American where it nevertheless indicated that the «F.D.A., Nissen and G.S.K. all come to comparable conclusions regarding increased risk for ischemic events, ranging from 30 percent to 43 percent!»
The company later tried to undermine said study, to multiply reassuring statements before pleading guilty, in 2010. GSK had thus accepted a settlement of 460 million dollars for 10,000 Americans who had sued it.
The group also paid, in 2012, a federal fine of 3 billion dollars, because of the illegal promotion of certain drugs and its failure to communicate safety data on Avandia, the largest federal sanction paid by a pharmaceuticals company in the United States.
