The French drug agency (Afssaps) failed to protect women from Mediator and defective PIP breast implants. But no one is responsible...
In the French meritocracy, competence is supposed to be rewarded.
So when the Mediator scandal broke last year (500 deaths estimated, years of warnings ignored, whistle-blowers hounded, massive cover up...) it was not surprising that the Afssaps, the astonishingly ineffective French version of the FDA*, decided to change Directors.
Less obvious is how they went about it.
The General Director, Jean Marimbert, who had run the agency since 2004, was not arrested, put in jail, questioned or even reprimanded, even though it was on his watch that a French company, Servier, had managed to peddle Mediator, a dangerous and potentially lethal drug originally meant for diabetics, to women whose only crime was to want to lose a little weight. And on his watch (and despite warnings) that the French company PIP managed to inundate the world market* with cheap French silicon implants.
No, no hint of disciplinary action.
Monsieur Marimbert (HEC, Sciences Po, ENA) was simply placed in a new position: Secrétaire général de l'Education Nationale.
So what? you might say. After all, no one leaving Afssaps had trouble finding work.
Well, I've been following French Education for several years now, and have always hoped that reform was possible. (I couldn't have written Sorbonne Confidential if I hadn't believed in the possibility of change.) But this is just too much.
France's Education Nationale needs the best, most committed and competent people.
And here our Mammouth is being used--abused--as a refuge not just for failed administrators, but ones whose professional disasters have led to entirely avoidable deaths by innocents.
It is too much.
Messieurs Xavier Betrand, Luc Chatel, Nicola Sarkozy: why did you do this?
(And teachers, don't you care that your leaders use France's proud education bureaucracy as a dumping grounds for failed functionaries?)
American readers might remember "Brownie", the joker President Bush appointed to run FEMA before Katrina, and whose incompetence left the disaster agency entirely unprepared to do its job when the crisis hit. It was a telling moment. The American president cared so little about the people he served that he named incompetents to key positions.
I had hoped France was better than that.
But, according to Le Point, it's not.
This week's Le Point features excerpts from a new book entitled "L'Oligarchie des Incapables" by Sophie Coignard and Roman Guber. The article "Les Secrets Inavouables de la Caste" may be the single most depressing item about France that I have ever read.
Many of us love and appreciate France in all its glorious contradictions. But the rot is deep. Much deeper, unfortunately, than many of us can imagine. All who serve France are not corrupt, of course. But the system is clearly in need of profound, far-reaching reform. For it is not just corrupt but corrupting.
Elections approach.
As good a time as any to start.
*The FDA outlawed both Mediator and PIP type silicon implants years ago.
http://sante.lefigaro.fr/actualite/2011/09/21/16060-mediator-ex-cadres-lafssaps-rebondissent
http://sante.lefigaro.fr/actualite/2012/01/05/16754-dangerosite-protheses-pip-lafssaps-alertee-2008
http://www.actu-environnement.com/ae/news/defaillance-systeme-vigilance-11767.php4
http://www.lepoint.fr/economie/les-secrets-inavouables-de-la-caste-06-01-2012-1415989_28.php
