The creation of a treatment for arthritis and the persecution of
its author, France's foremost forensic scientist
by Martin J Walker
" In 1985 while working as an independent forensic
scientist for the French judiciary, Le Ribault joined forces
with a highly acclaimed
research chemist, Professor Norbert Duffaut from the University
of Bordeaux. Between them, they hoped to develop their common
work on
organic silica, a substance which they believed had a wide range
of therapeutic uses.
After twelve years work together, perhaps as a consequence of their
work on the new therapy, Duffaut was dead, poisoned in suspicious
circumstances and Le Ribault himself had suffered two months solitary
confinement in a French jail."
Loic Le Ribault's Resistance
" I shall continue my actions of distributing OS5
despite all the opposition. I do it for all those patients
for whom I have the opportunity and
honour of caring, those who were abandoned by modern medicine
which was unable to offer them a cure or who found the orthodox
treatments
offered worse than the illness itself."
Loic Le Ribault, France's most renowned forensic scientist (1)
and specialist in the study of silica, holds court in the dingy
surroundings
of the Flying Fish pub on the harbour in St Helier, Jersey. With
a Gaelic shrug and in faltering English, he explains how the
pub has become his home and his office.
He knows almost everyone in the bar, as he knows the bus
drivers, the local shopkeepers and many of the harbours
boat owners. He
knows them, he says, 'because I have treated them, for
this illness and
that illness. Many of them I have cured with OS5'.
Sitting in the Flying Fish, drinking bitter and smoking the
occasional Galloises, Le Ribault does not seem like a man
who has been hounded
out of France because he discovered and distributed a treatment
for arthritis and a number of other common ailments.
In 1985 while working as an independent forensic scientist
for the French judiciary, Le Ribault joined forces with a
highly acclaimed research chemist, Professor Norbert Duffaut
from
the
University
of
Bordeaux. Between them, they hoped to develop their common
work on organic silica, a substance which they believed had
a wide
range of therapeutic uses.
After twelve years work together, perhaps as a consequence
of their work on the new therapy, Duffaut was dead, poisoned
in
suspicious
circumstances and Le Ribault himself had suffered two months
solitary confinement in a French jail.
Today, Le Ribault is on his own, forced to ground in Jersey,
a stateless alien on the run from the French police.
His life turned
into a desperate
adventure, Le Ribault is paying the price for falling
out with scientific orthodoxy, medical professionals and
the
French
establishment.
Loic Le Ribault appears quintessentially French. He is
phlegmatic and when he is not laughing gently and self-deprecatingly,
his rubbery face deflates with the world-weary sadness
of
a circus
clown. In
well-worn casual clothes, with white wings of cotton
wool hair floating around the bald dome of his head,
his lack
of fluent
English, for
which he constantly apologises, makes him appear wise
but forgetful. Listening to him, you have to keep reminding
yourself that
over the last five years, he has lost everything but
his
mind.
AN EARLY PROMISE
Thirty years ago, still in his twenties, Loic Le Ribault
was a precocious young academic, having ground-breaking
papers published by the French
Academy of Science. At twenty-four, in 1971, he
discovered a new
function for the electron scanning microscope (ESM)
which enabled
him to discern the history of grains of sand.
Previously the electron scanning microscope capable at that time
of 30,000 magnification had been used in biology and medicine,
no one had imagined that it might be used for looking at rocks.
Under the electron scanning microscope, Le Ribault found that he
could discern the entire history of a grain of sand; where and
when it originated, how it was formed, where and how it had been
transported, where it had next lodged, how long it had stayed in
that place. By the time he had finished his research, he had devised
a list of two hundred and fifty criteria by which the history of
sand might be diagnosed. The field was later to become so specialised
that it would take three years to train a scientist in the technical
knowledge to carry out these tests. (2)
Le Ribault's approach to analysis and detection of sand,
had some academic and commerical uses but was most clearly
an invaluable
aid to policing. While still working at university, he was approached
by the FBI and became a forensic consultant for them.
Despite this early discovery of a new use for the ESM, Le
Ribault found it hard to get work in the universities after
he qualified
and in 1982, he set up his own national laboratory for electron
microscopy, called CARME and quickly became France's most noted
forensic scientist. CARME became the principal laboratory used
by the police service, the judiciary and the French Home Office.
Le Ribault is the first to admit that he is not a diplomat,
even that he is anarchistic in his view of society. Constant
struggles
between himself and the French Home Office, seemingly about
hegemony, did not endear him to servants of the State. At
the height of
CARME's work, Le Ribault was a nationally recognised figure
with a high
public profile, working and commenting on some of France's
most intriguing criminal, military and political cases. Always
a populist,
he was much sought after by television, radio and newspapers
as well as the French political parties.
'When I had CARME, every week I had articles in the press
and on TV, and every French party asked me to be involved
with
them. On
TV and in newspapers, I made information accessible, very
often I did lectures in Primary and secondary schools as
well as
universities'.
Despite a brilliant record as an expert witness, the French
Home Office and the police service seemed to have been
wary of Le
Ribault's cavalier genius as well as his tacit control
of Home Office forensics.
He says that the French State frequently referred to him
as their scientist and to his laboratory as that of the
Home Office.
Le Ribault's career as France's most eminent forensic scientist
came to a sudden end in 1991, when the Home Office decided
to integrate their own regional forensic laboratories
equipped with
electron
microscopes. In the following debacle, Le Ribault lost
his laboratory, which had employed thirty odd people,
and his
home which he had
mortgaged as surety for the laboratory.
A resilient character, Le Ribault adapted to his new
life, lived in the family home and returned to his
first love,
silica. Back
in 1972, while working with sand on the ESM he had
made an interesting discovery, a layer of water-soluble
amorphous
silica which contained
micro-organisms covered the surface of some sand grains.
He found that these micro organism and the secretions
which they
left
on the sand contained organic silica. Organic silica
differs from
mineral silica which makes up the majority of the earths
crust, in that it contains Carbon and can be readily
assimilated by
animals.
By 1975, Le Ribault had created a process by which
it was possible to recover these deposits from the
surface
of
the sand. All
of this work was accepted by the scientific establishment
and his
papers published by the French Academy of Science.
There had been constant research into organic silica
over the previous fifty years and some of this
research had
raised questions
about
its therapeutic use. In his early work, as a geologist,
Le Ribault had not been following the research
into silica and
health. But
in the early eighties, while working on the organic
silica deposits he had found, he immersed his hands
in organic
silica solution
and found that his psoriasis was cured. From then
on, Le Ribault's work became focused in the therapeutic
properties of silica.
FROM POLLUTANT TO ESSENTIAL NUTRIENT
Silica is an essential element of living matter.
Found in body tissue, the thymus gland, the
vascular lining,
the adrenal
glands, the liver, the spleen, the pancreas
and in considerable quantity
in hair. With age the body loses its store
of organic silica and is unable to replace it from sources
outside the body
which
are
predominantly mineral silica.
It was originally thought that silica was at
worst an environmental contaminant of the
human body
and at best
an element which
quickly passed through the body and was excreted.
These ideas were based
almost entirely upon observations of mineral
Silica, which in the form of dust and particles
was responsible
for a
number of
serious
illnesses such as silicosis.
Silica in mineral form had been used therapeutically; it was however
absorbed inefficiently into the human body. It had traditionally
gained a place in the pantheon of herbal remedies, being present
in Horse's Tail Fern, and some vegetables.
Work over the years on absorbable mineral and organic silica
since the nineteen thirties, showed irrefutably that organic
silica could
be described as an essential nutrient for both humans and other
animals. (3) It is necessary for early calcification of bones and
animal’s shells, its deficiency has been found to produce
alterations and abnormalities in bone growth. It has also been
observed that silica plays a part in the make up of the cells which
formed blood vessel walls. Perhaps most importantly, silica has
been found to directly affect and form a large part of the connective
tissue and cartilage which plays an important part in joints and
the illnesses which affect them.
In studies during the nineteen seventies it was found that
silica supplementation aided bone and cartilage growth,
in 1993, it was
reported that treatment with silicon could stimulate bone formation.
By the nineteen nineties, silica formulations were being
used by some pharmaceutical companies, on wound dressings
and burn
dressings
because it was recognized that wounds healed more quickly and
burns could be stabilized. (4,5)
A MAN ON THE MOON
In 1982, Le Ribault began work with Professor Norbert Duffaut,
a chemist and research engineer at the CNRS (The National
Centre for Scientific Research) situated at the University
of Bordeaux.
In 1957, Duffaut had synthesised a molecule of organic
silicon which was capable of being absorbed by the human
body.
Unlike Le Ribault, Duffaut had been using his organic silica
as a therapeutic agent, treating patients since his first
discoveries in the nineteen fifties. Like Ribault, Duffaut
paid little
attention to the academic papers on organic silica, convinced
that he was
ahead of the field.
When Le Ribault first met Duffaut, he had been treating
people for years and he was well known in the South
West of France
and even in Paris. Duffaut had created NDR, the Norbert
Duffaut Remedy,
and had manufactured many litres, for thousands and
thousands of patients. Whether to avoid the regulatory
agencies,
or simply out
of sheer cussedness, Duffaut refused to keep any records
of his transactions. 'He absolutely refused to
keep a record of
anything
which he did', says Le Ribault. He would say, 'We
are right, we will win in the end'.
In 1958 Duffaut had begun successful clinical work with Dr Jacques
Janet, a gastroenterologist. He had also begun treating people,
very successfully, for arthritis. Duffaut was, however, sure that
cardiovascular work and blood circulation work were the most important
therpeutic goals in relation to organic silica. In the nineteen
sixties, Duffaut worked with Dr Rager a cardio-vascular surgeon,
who used organic silica for post-operative recovery. In 1967 Rager
was awarded the J Levy Bricker Prize by the French Academy of Medicine
for his work on the use of organic silica in the treatment of man.
Rager's work also determined that organic silica helped cancer
patients withstand chemotherapy.
Le Ribault and Duffaut had more than a passion for silica in
common. Duffaut, in his sixties, was considered by many to
be an impossibly
difficult man. Le Ribault, speaking with sadness but with his usual
humour says of Duffaut
'He was less diplomatic than me! A lot less diplomatic
than me! Can you imagine? He was impossible. He considered
that
the system
was made up of stupid people, he was right of course, but he said
it to them on many occasions. He was eccentric, very much an individualist.
I guess I was the only person able to work with him'.
Like Le Ribault, Duffaut also used humour to shield himself
from the deeper conflicts. 'Duffaut was a very, very
clever man, really
a genius, a high level chemist who was always singing and joking
and smiling, all the day long - every day!' Le Ribault fondly remembers
an unmarried man, utterly immersed in his scientific work, cut
off from the humdrum intercourse of the everyday world to such
an extent, Le Ribault jokes, that he was, 'on the moon' for much
of the time.
When Le Ribault met Duffaut, he had been testing his synthetic
organic silica molecule therapeutically for fifteen years and had
frequently offered his invention free to the French State and its
medical research organisations. All his approaches had been met
with an utter and seemingly deliberate silence.
In 1985, Duffaut and Le Ribault took out an international patent
to protect the therapeutic use of organic silica. And in 1987,
like many other publicly concerned scientists outside the pharmaceutical
companies, they made representations to the French Minister of
Research, asking that he consider their discovery for trials in
cases of AIDS-related illnesses. So determined were they to force
recognition of the health-giving qualities of silica on the Government
that they had their request, and the evidence to support it, legally
served on the Minister. Duffaut and Le Ribault receive no reply.
In November 1993, Duffaut, was found dead in his bed by neighbours
who noticed he had not been out of his house. Despite the fact
that Duffaut was in his early seventies and had died in bed, a
post-mortem was held and potassium cyanide in his system. Although
no letter was found and despite the fact that witnesses had seen
Duffaut the night before in good spirits, the police concluded
that he had committed suicide.
Initially, Le Ribault accepted the suicide of his colleague
but has since begun to have doubts. His principle doubt was
that Duffaut,
a highly trained chemist would have chosen Potassium Cyanide as
a vehicle for suicide, knowing that it would occasion an incredibly
painful death. Duffaut's writing prior to his death did show a
despondency clearly brought about by continual disappointment and
frustration. His last notes contained the senetence. 'The authorities
have condemned my discovery out of hand without having even tested
it'.
PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT
As his work progressed with Duffaut, Loic Le Ribault found
that there was, in his mind, less and less academic considerations
about
the therapeutic uses of organic silica. He was preoccupied throughout
the eighties and early nineties with trying to make the organic
silica Duffaut had been using for compresses, drinkable.
'One of the most serious difficulties, was trying to make G5
drinkable. The solution we had created was slightly toxic,
alright for using
on the skin but not for drinking. Perhaps no more toxic than red
wine, but I didn't want it to be at all toxic'.
When Le Ribault first make his therapeutic discovery, he was
sceptical. However, after two or three years working with
a number of doctors
who used the discovery on patients and after his years of work
with Duffaut, he decided that he was in a position to send files
to the Ministry of Health, asking them to carry out trials on the
basis of free solutions which would be supplied by him. He did
not receive an answer to his many communications. The private treatment
of patients, did not fit with either Le Ribault or Duffaut's ideas
about health care, both wished that the French government would
take up the idea of organic silica. By the mid nineties, between
them, Le Ribault and Duffaut had treated well over ten thousand
people, firstly with organic silica poultices and then with a drinkable
tonic solution.
Determined to make his findings of public consequence, Le Ribault
arranged personal meetings in America with the Chairmen of the
main pharmaceutical laboratories; he traveled to visit executives
in Canada and the length and breadth of France. All the people
he met showed interest and most told him that they would be in
touch within weeks, as he now says, 'I have been waiting fifteen
years for a reply'. One executive of a pharmaceutical company offered
him £1,000,000 just to bury his discovery.
REGULATING MOLECULES
At the end of 1994, Le Ribault, now working on his own with
an organic silica molecule suspended in water, which he called
G5,
stepped up production and distribution to people with health problems.
It was Le Ribault's case that as a natural non toxic substance,
G5 did not need a license; he saw it as a tonic or dietary supplement.
The problem of who pays to test a novel medical product, developed
outside the pharmaceutical companies, has become a serious issue
in America and European countries. On the boundaries of different
kinds of medical treatment, a constant war is being waged. Trade
and practice with non-pharmaceutical treatments are constantly
attacked by big companies. The most common aggressors in this war
of attrition are the pharmaceutical companies. With close allies
in the regulatory agencies, university research departments, hospital
Trusts and the media, a strategy of attrition whittles away at
the number of herbs which are legally available and constantly
attempts to restrict the availability of vitamins and food supplements.
The highly capitalised pharmaceutical companies can afford
to compete with each other, paying hundreds of thousands,
often millions,
of pounds to carry out trials and then thousands of pounds for
preparatory paper work so that their cases can be put before the
regulatory agencies. When they have obtained licenses, aggressive
marketing strategies, regulatory protection and sometimes 'dirty
tricks' ensure competitive ascendancy.
Herbalists, homoeopaths, nutritional therapists and those producers
and practitioners who work with non-pharmaceutical treatments,
unable to raise the money or hire sympathetic laboratories to carry
out trials, are forced to market and use their treatments with
one hand tied behind their back, unable to advertise any health-enhancing
effects of any of their therapies.
Some few innovators are fortunate, in achieving special discretionary
awards from the FDA in America, or the Medicine Controls Agency
or MAFF in Britain, which exempt their natural therapies from the
needs of a license (6).The career of these odd treatments is irregular
and haphazard and is probably dependant upon whether or not there
is competition from pharmaceutical products.
The competitive, financial and professional censorship by multinationals
and doctors of novel natural health therapies, at this lower end
of the health care market, has inevitably spawned 'illegal' businesses
and made criminals out of some doctors, scientists and therapists.
But perhaps more importantly, in an odd way the pharmaceutically
protective regulations and their policing have also created criminals
out of many patients. By denying patients the freedom to choose
their own treatments, the law and the regulatory agencies have
forced some patients into a culture of underground health care.
It was into this maelstrom of pharmaceutical protection, pharmaceutical
company biased regulation and confused policing, that Le Ribault,
tired of the invisibility of the authorities and angered by the
odd death of his colleague, launched G5 in 1994. Le Ribault's determination
to confront the big companies and the regulatory agencies was to
bring his life collapsing about him.
Soon after Le Ribault began to distrubute G5, in June 1995,
Jean-Michel Graille, a journalist on Sud-Ouest Dimanche,
approached him and
asked if he could write about his discovery. Ten years previously,
Graille had written a book called Dossier Priore; une nouvelle
affaire Pasteur? (7) After getting agreement from his editor, Graille
attached himself to Le Ribault for four months, observing his work
as a scientist, innovator and now entrepreneur. After some initial
scepticism, Graille became completely convinced of the therapeutic
effects of Le Ribault's discovery. In October 1995, Sud-Ouest
Dimanche published, across five pages of their magazine, a detailed account
of Le Ribault's work and the suppression of his findings.
The unbelievable results of this article were to drag Le Ribault
into an uncontrollable conflict with the judiciary and other, more
hidden, forces. In the days following publication, Le Ribault received
35,000 phone calls, letters and visiting patients. He was obliged
to rent an hotel and call scientists, doctors and personal friends
to help sort out the calls and callers. Sud-Ouest Dimanche had
to hire eight receptionists to answer calls. The local telephone
service broke down and the phone lines to police stations and post
offices were blocked for days. In the three months that followed
the article, Le Ribault did his best to treat the thousands of
people who converged on the area, seeking help. He says now, that
pharmacists in the area, lost around 35% of their turnover in this
tidal wave.
The article had other, more sinister results. As soon as it
came out, Le Ribault claims, other newspapers were warned
not to publish
more articles. He received frequent death threats, his house was
burgled, and his collaborators were threatened. One middle aged
woman, who had been his aide for many years, was held hostage for
an hour, in Le Ribault's house, attacked and seriously wounded.
Le Ribault and his colleague knew the assailant, a Marseilles criminal
who had tried to force Le Ribault to give him a franchise on G5.
The police did nothing when they were informed.
Either by conspiracy, or simple criminal opportunism, companies
suddenly began to spring up claiming to be using organic silica
for health therapies. Many of these companies, used Le Ribault
and Duffaut's names, their photographs and even their fake signatures.
Illegal advertising material flooded the market using quotes from
Graille's article. Le Ribault later saw public laboratory analysis
of these products, which he says were either water, mineral silica
or dangerous, unstable synthesis of organic silica.
Le Ribault had nothing to do with these ventures, but in January
1996, after a number of apparently genuine complaints had been
received about these fake products, the Order of Doctors and the
Order of Pharmacologists, the professional institutions which protect
the interests of doctors and pharmacists throughout France, laid
a complaint against Le Ribault before an examining Magistrate.
The complaint cited the illegal practices of medicine and pharmacology.
Initially, with the naivete of one divorced from politics, Le Ribault
was pleased that the complaint had been lodged; 'this was something
which I had been looking for, something which I expected. I thought
that now the court would be obliged to instruct someone to make
the tests'. Le Ribault had about six months grace before the hearing
was due.
In the middle of these assaults, Le Ribault was unable to see
the wood for the trees, unable to perceive that an all-out
campaign
had begun, the objective of which was to put an end to the therapeutic
use of his discovery. His confusion and unhappiness were deepened
by the death of Jean-Michel Graille in April 1996. Graille, perhaps
his most articulate public supporter died suddenly and unexpectedly,
aged fifty, of a stroke, while relaxing in his garden.
GOING TO ANTIGUA
Le Ribault looks back upon his own unworldliness and the dangers
which he has faced with some mirth. His most self-deprecating story,
in an otherwise dark melodrama, is the story of how he came to
end up in Antigua.
Following the publication of Graille's story, many individuals
sent money, in total £500,000, to enable Le Ribault to build
a clinic. Amongst the sharks who suddenly appeared wanting a piece
of the action, were a group of businessmen who sought to advice
Le Ribault on the setting up of a company. He took their advice,
transferring the control of the new company to nominee shareholders
suggested by the group.
After some discussion and planning, Le Ribault was told that
contacts had been made and bank accounts opened, for him
to set up his clinic
in Antigua. Le Ribault's passport had been stolen when his house
was burgled. With his fare paid by the company, he set off for
Antigua, undercover, via the French protectorate of Martinique.
It was only when he landed in Antigua and found no one there to
meet him, that he began to realise he was alone on the other side
of the world with no passport, no English language, no funds or
friends.
'I was told that the Prime Minister himself would be waiting
for me in Antigua with a diplomatic passport and I would
be free to
travel. I was told that there was a bank account for me and everything
was ready to start the clinic. Of course, when I got there, no
one was waiting for me. I had only three small bottles of G5'.
As resourceful as ever, Le Ribault began treating the rich,
elderly and often arthritic boat owners as they returned
from their days
sailing around the coast. At the end of his first days work, he
had a hundred pounds and appointments for the whole of the following
week. A week later, he had enough money to travel back to France,
had he wanted to.
By his own perseverance, Le Ribault made the contacts himself
which should have been made for him in Antigua.
'I got permission from the Prime Minister to start a health
centre. I had two kinds of patients, local patients, who
have no money
and I never asked money from them, they paid what they were able
for their treatment; they brought me fish and vegetables and other
things. In the evenings I went to the big hotels filled with the
millionaire tourists, to cure them of their sunburn. Every day
I had between twenty and forty tourists to cure. G5 gets rid of
the pain of sunburn within five minutes and within an hour cures
the sunburn itself. I also taught the barmen in the hotel bars
how to use G5, so every evening the barmen applied poultices to
the tourists'.
During his time in Antigua, Le Ribault pursued an embittered
relationship with his homeland. When he received regulatory
agreement to produce
and use G5 on Antigua, he made sure that the French press raised
awkward questions about the situation in France.
Le Ribault's strategy of embarrassment was to cost him dear.
Two days after the issue was raised in the French newspapers,
the French
police raided the home of his eighty-five year old mother and questioned
her for five hours. His mother, who had been fit and healthy before
the interrogation, fell ill that evening. She never recovered her
health and died two weeks later.
The police told Ribault's mother that there was now a warrant
out for Le Ribault's arrest and they were searching for documents
not
only about G5 but also about Ribault's forensic laboratory CARME.
Le Ribault thinks now, that when his trouble began to develop over
G5, the police became concerned about the possible leaking of information
about sensitive police cases.
Stranded in the Caribbean, Le Ribault was deeply saddened by
the death of his mother and angered by what appeared to be
a gratuitous
police strategy. He had not hidden himself in Antigua: the judge
who was dealing with the complaint against him, had his fax, phone
number and address,
'The police knew that my mother was very old and tired. When
she died, I suppose they reckoned that I would turn up at
the funeral
and they would be able to arrest me.'
In November 1997, Le Ribault felt obliged to go back to France
to recover the personal and work documents which he needed to continue
work in Antigua. Knowing that there was a warrant out for his arrest,
he decided to return covertly. 'It was my intention to show the
Antiguan agreements to people in France in the hope that I could
get a similar one there. I visited doctors and a number of other
sympathizers who I thought could push my case forward'.
DIRECTLY TO JAIL
Although Le Ribault was 'underground' in France, two of his
friends suggested that he give a lecture, about G5, to a select
audience.
Unbeknown to him, however, with the intention of creating media
interest in his case and G5, his friends had contacted the police
and told them where the seminar was being held. To set Le Ribault's
mind at ease his friends told him that if the police did appear
he would be whisked away, leaving sympathetic attending journalists
to report the crisis. In the event Le Ribault was whisked away,
not by his friends but by a jubilant police posse.
And so, by accident, the most frightening part of Le Ribault's
journey began.
'I was sent immediately to jail. I was taken first to the
Bordeaux station of the Regional Crime Squad, from where the
police called
the judge dealing with my case, they said to him, "Victory,
we have caught Le Ribault"'.
The judge declined to hear Le Ribault that day and he was
taken to Gradignan prison.
The next day, Le Ribault was taken before the judge for a
ten-minute hearing. Despite the fact that the only complaint
against him
was, he thought, a civil complaint from the Order of Doctors
and Pharmacists,
the judge ordered that Le Ribault be kept in prison. In answer
to his lawyer's protests that in the prison, he was in danger
from men whom he had helped convict, the judge ruled that he
be kept
in solitary confinement.
What worried Le Ribault as he was taken back to the jail,
was the fact that no time limit had been put on his imprisonment.
The judge
who was clearly 'building a case', had said only that with
Christmas coming up his schedule would be full and he would
not be able
to hear the case. Le Ribault was also concerned that the
judge
who
had been selected to hear his case had been one of the main
customers for his forensic services when he worked for the
police: a judge
known throughout Bordeaux, according to Le Ribault to be
'a crazy judge, very strange, very dangerous'.
Earlier on the day of his arrest, Le Ribault had five teeth
extracted, now as he entered solitary confinement he was
not only uncomfortable
and isolated but also unable to eat. In the depths of winter,
with snow falling outside and no heating inside, Le Ribault
served his
solitary in a cell which had next to no glass in the windows.
Two fingers on one hand and both his feet became frozen
and, consequently,
he now has trouble walking any distance.
'The cold was the worst problem, even greater than not
knowing when I would be released'.
The deprivations which Le Ribault suffered in a contemporary
French prison sound echoes of Solzynitsin. As with
many prisons, old systems
had fallen into disuse or been adapted by the screws.
Every cell had a bell in case of emergency but the
guards had
switched them
off because of the continuous noise. To get help, the
prisoners had to push a piece of paper between the
door and the door
jam which could be seen in the corridor. This, Le Ribault
says, was
'all right as long as the officers liked you',
if they didn't, you could wait 'a thousand hours'. The judge
allowed Le Ribault
visits from only two working colleagues, while specifically
excluding his partner.
Le Ribault's scientific imagination is also very creative.
In prison, he not only recorded the day-to-day events
and his thoughts,
but
made a number of detailed drawings of his surroundings,
including the prison courtyard and his cell. Having
finished these,
he began meticulously copying the graffiti of other
prisoners from the walls;
'Some of the drawings were very good, very interesting,
some poems had a lot of feeling'.
RELEASED FROM PRISON
At his second and last hearing before the magistrate,
Le Ribault discovered that more complaints had
accumulated in his file.
The charges had grown from two civil complaints
to include nine criminal
charges, such as, the selling of a toxic substance,
illegal experimentation in biology, and advertising
a medicine
in the press. Le Ribault
was guilty of none of these further charges.
Of the charge that he was not a doctor, Le Ribault
could say only that his qualification, that
of a Doctor of
Science, was
the highest
qualification awarded by a university in France.
He also made the point that any biologist and
similar natural
scientist who wished
to emulate Pasteur, himself not a doctor, stood
a good
chance of being thrown in prison in modern
France.
Following the arrest of Le Ribault, the authorities
made a number of statements relating to G5;
one, very much
in his
favour, was
an assurance that the substance was completely
not toxic.
Desperate to get La Ribault out of this nightmare
backwater, his lawyer made an application
to the High Court for
his release.
'I was released by the High Court but the
judges reserved their opinion and gave
it two days
after the hearing,
which meant
that I was an extra three days in prison.
Three days in which I did
not know whether I would be released.'
On his release the court imposed strict
conditions on his bail, he had to surrender
his passport
and he was
to report
to the
police station twice a week.
Released from prison, Le Ribault stayed
first with a friend but two months
after he settled
there,
he received
a phone
call from
a police friend informing him that
police officers were on their way
to arrest
him. Five minutes
later, with
Le Ribault
watching
from the garden, six police officers
raided his friend's house.
He went next to stay with another
friend, a woman with whom he had
been in contact
while
in prison,
the next
day Le Ribault
noticed police cars observing the
address. This time, he decided
to make
his way to Belgium.
'It took me one month to get to
the Belgian border, where I was
hidden
in a police
station by a friend
who was
an officer of
the Gendarmerie. The policemen
drove me over the Belgian frontier,
using his police papers. From
there I rang Belgium friends and spent
four months
in
an isolated
house in the middle
of the Ardennes
forest'.
From Belgium, Le Ribault went
secretly to England and from
there to Jersey,
where he
has stayed
for the last
eleven
months. He
is now very aware of his position
as man without a home or a
public identity. Although he does not
mention it, he must frequently
weigh up his
situation in light
of his
early brilliant
career.
'My friends have helped me
because I have absolutely
nothing. I
have no money,
no
relatives. I am
an illegal person,
a stateless alien'.
SOME JERSEY CASES
Loic Le Ribault has become
a medical attraction
on Jersey; he has given
his treatment,
now called OS5,
to hundreds
of people
and
although a few have found
it to be ineffective
for certain
conditions,
in the main,
his clients have
been satisfied.
Most of those who
have been treated know
of Le Ribault's deeper problems
and
some of them,
infected by the
fear which surrounds
such cases
do not
want to be interviewed.
Many others, however, are transparently
behind
him in his efforts
to provide
OS5 to wider public.
Maria de Jesus is a nervous
and exuberant thirty
three year old
Maderian who
has lived in Jersey
for the last
22 years.
In the
first months of this
year, training to run
150 miles
across the Sahara
desert
in the
Marathon des Sables,
she nearly
broke her
ankle when her foot
caught in a hole.
With five weeks to
go before the marathon,
hospital
doctors gave
her crutches
and told her that
she would definitely
not be fit
for the race. She
became increasingly convinced
of this, when after
a week and a half
of concentrated physiotherapy,
she
was no better.
A friend suggested
that she visit
Le Ribault and made
an appointment
for
her.
'My friend rang
him at eight
o'clock in the
evening and
he said come
over. I told
him
about my ankle,
he looked
at it
and told
me that I would
be
able to do the
race. I did
not believe
him
and
was very
skeptical. I
had to drink
a spoonful
as well as
putting
a poultice on
my foot. I was quite
frightened
but
I was
willing to
do anything in
order to go on
the race'.
Maria says that,
after taking
OS5 for a few
days, she felt
more energetic
and began
jogging.
A
week after
she began
the treatment,
her ankle was
completely
healed. Three
weeks later,
Maria set off
for Morocco
where
she ran the
grueling one hundred
and
fifty mile
race across
the desert.
Maria has advised
a number
of her friends
to use
0S5 and to
see Le
Ribault and
says that
from these
people,
she
has not
had a
single complaint.
'This is
a treatment
with
absolutely
no adverse
side effects
and
it should
be freely
available
to people.
I hope
that Mr Le Ribault
is able
to open a
clinic
here on the island'.
Frank Amy
is a
tough, level
headed,
sceptical
working-class
man,
who has
had a
crumbling spine
for the
last
eighteen
years.
Initially
it
was Le
Ribaut
who contacted
Amy,
wanting
him to
help
in introducing
OS5 to
the Island.
After
his
first
meeting with
Le Ribault,
Ames
read
the case histories
of
other
treatments and
felt
complete
disbelief.
Amy,
who
had been
on
strong pharmaceutical
pain
killers
for
eight years,
was
sleeping only
from
two
to five
hours
a night
because
of
discomfort and pain
but
what really
upset
him
was that
he
was unable
to
bend enough
to
tie his shoe
laces.
After
his
first
meeting
with
Le
Ribault
in
November 1997,
Amy
began treating
himself
with
OS5.
Feeling
that
it
was
important,
'to
be
fair
to
the
treatment',
Amy
stopped
taking
his
expensive
pain
killers.
Within
a
fortnight of
taking
the
treatment
he
was
feeling
and
sleeping
better;
some
nights
he
was
sleeping
for
eight
hours.
Within
a
month he
could
bend
down
to
tie
his
shoe
laces.
Amy
took
OS5
for
ten
weeks,
now,
seven
months
after
the
treatment,
he
says
he
still
feels
very
well
and
he
is
almost
able
to
touch
his
toes
without
the
slightest
pain.
Apart
from
the
continuing
problem
of
a
crumbling spine
and
occasional
painful
twinges
which
he
puts
down
to
sensitive
nerves,
he
considers
himself
cured.
Since
his experience
with OS5,
Frank Amy
has become
the distributor
of the
therapy on
Jersey. As
Head Constable
of his
elected Parish
police, one
of twelve
on Jersey,
Amy is
in charge
of licensing;
he also
sits in
the States
Parliament. With
these duties,
he feels
a certain
responsibility for
Le Ribault
and his
therapy, he
also feels
that it
is important
to get
proper legal
status for
him and
a specially
built clinic.
Amy suggests
that his
full time
post as
Head Constable,
a little
like an
English Mayor
means that
he should
'assist the
people as
much as
possible'. He
sees the
possibility of
help being
extended to
Le Ribault
because he
is in
effect a
businessman, and
to his
parishioners who
might gain
from his
treatment. Sitting
in the
States parliament,
Amy also
keeps a
weather eye
on the
Island's drugs
bill and
can see
evident savings
if OS5
were to
be used
more widely.
Paul
Leverdier is
a forty
year old
pool technician
for the
Jersey General
Hospital, a
carefully spoken
triathalon athlete
who works
with patients
in the
hospital pool.
In early
1998 he
suffered with
chronic achilles
tendonitis, a
painful tightening
and jamming
of the
achilles tendon
often caused
by overtraining.
Laverdier's
tendonitis had
lasted for
six months
and was
badly affecting
the running
and cycling
aspects of
his triatholon
events. A
physiotherapist colleague
at the
hospital had
tried to
treat the
condition with
ultra sound
and frictions
(a massaging
of the
tendon). After
six months,
the problem
had been
going on
for so
long that
Leverdier began
to think
that he
would reluctantly
have to
take long-term
rest.
In
February, after
Laverdier was
introduced to
Le Ribault,
he put
SO5 on
a tissue,
taped it
to the
back of
his ankle
and left
it overnight.
Previously, when
he went
running, the
pain on
starting to
run and
speeding up
had been
crippling. The
morning after
he treated
himself, there
was no
pain and,
when he
had finished,
the tendon
was not
jammed up
with heavy
mucus as
it had
been in
the past.
He continued
with the
treatment for
two more
consecutive nights,
now treating
both tendons.
Five months
after the
treatment, Laverdier
seems to
have shaken
off the
tendonitis completely
and is
turning in
triatholon times
which he
would have
been proud
of five
years ago.
Laverdier has still not told his colleagues at work about his
self-medication; he would, he says, be embarrassed by their skepticism.
THE MEANING OF A STORY
Dr Loic Le Ribault's story reads in part like a Walt Disney
film in which the boffin-like scientist, after some hocus
pocus in the
laboratory, discovers a 'cure-all elixir' and is then hounded,
chemical flask in hand, by men in black hats. From another
perspective, however, his story reads in shades of the
darkest noire, a synthesis
of classic contemporary dramas, in which the publicly concerned
scientist, finds himself, like Ibsen's character, in 'An Enemy
of the People', beyond the pale of the orthodox community,
branded as a fraud and a charlatan and hounded by the furies
of profit
and power.
However we read the tale, we might recognise it as a once
apocryphal story which is fast becoming an everyday reality.
The scientist,
medical scientist or doctor, forced to work beyond orthodoxy
and subjected to powerful manipulation, ridicule, sabotage
or criminalisation,
is becoming an increasingly common figure in contemporary
drama and real life.
Although the ethnic or national details of these histories
of scientific dissent, whether their subject be BSE, Vitamin
B6,
OS5, cold fusion,
homoeopathy or everlasting light bulbs, differ slightly,
they are all Euro-American stories of the post-modern era.
Le Ribault's
case, that of a well established scientist living on an
independently governed island, in exile from a European,
apparently democratic,
power and owning a medicinal product which is legally produced
and distributed across the world, illustrates the international
nature of the condition.
It would be theoretically attractive to describe a temporal
and social continuum for dissident scientists, beginning
with the
resurgence of science as a powerful ideology in the post-industrial
period.
In fact, the struggle between science and the ideological
establishment and within science between its ruling groups
and its dissidents,
has changed little in quality, since the time of Galileo
who was tortured by the Catholic church for claiming
that the earth
revolved
around the sun.
It seems possible, however, that a century ago, or even
fifty years ago, Le Ribault's work, pursued only out
of a pure
and curious
interest in science and health, might have been supported
by the State or by philanthropists and the results
of his work
offered by some commercial organisation to the people.
In post-industrial Europe and France particularly,
'the public'
no longer has
a
voice
at powerful tables. Today the remarkable discovery
of Loic Le Ribault and Norbert Duffault, which is indisputably
in the interests
of
the public, has become the carrion for the wolves of
private,
vested interests.
In an era when the market, especially in medicine,
is fought over by multinational corporations and
manipulated by huge
trading blocs,
Le Ribault's path is an increasingly well-trodden
one. The metropolitan centres of orthodox industrial science
are now
fringed by dissidents:
intellectual 'travelers' who are as surely banished
as
the religious heretics who wandered medieval Europe.
In the post-modern era, vested commercial interests
regulate both science and medicine and more than
ever before the
leading institutions
of the scientific and medical professions are in
the pockets of industry. This free-for-all between
science,
professional
dogmatism
and vested interests was most colourfully displayed
during the years which followed Robert Gallo's
'discovery' that
the probable
cause of AIDS was HIV.
For those who take an interest in dissent within
science, the year 1985 is recognisable as the
point at which
scientific work began
to be reviewed by press conference rather than
peers groups. In France, in the years that the
Wellcome
Foundation protected
its
monopoly license for AZT, a number of medical
research scientists found themselves facing the possibility
of criminal charges,
for pursuing their own scientific investigations
of AIDS related
illness.
In both Britain and America, scientists who failed
to concur with the viral model of AIDS-related
illness were
frozen
out of their
work and their funding withdrawn.
When Le Ribault and Professor Duffaut applied
to have G5 tested on people with AIDS-related
illnesses,
in
1987, the Wellcome
Foundation had, weeks before, gained its monopoly
license to market AZT. This
initial licensing in Britain and America, which
had been received only six months after Phase
II trials
for the
drug had been
aborted, was followed by a multi-million dollar
campaign across the world,
beseeching governments to buy. In 1989, for
example, the
Brazilian government paid US$130 million for
AZT. France bought into
AZT within a matter of weeks of it being licensed.
It was clear from the amount of money which
Wellcome pumped into professional committees,
advertising
and ongoing research
into
AZT, that when a country bought AZT, it was
also expected to cease research on any other
approach
to the problem
of Aids-
related
illnesses. In America and other European
countries, non-pharmaceutical and specifically non anti-viral
approaches to AIDS, were
discouraged.
The other ailments for which OS5 has proved
most effective, rather than speculative,
have been
inflammatory illnesses
like arthritis
and injuries such as muscle strains. These
are all highly competitive areas of profit
for the
pharmaceutical
industry.
If Ribault's case is anything to go by,
the French, like the Americans, appear
to have
a very demonstrative
way
of resolving
their battles
over science. While the British tend
to be fair and transparent in theory, while
secretly
smudging
decisions
in practice,
the French take their recalcitrant scientists
to court or throw
them in prison,
while at the same time silencing the
press.
In Italy, patients and cancer doctors
have been publicly divided by the unorthodox
vitamin and
hormone treatment
developed by
Professor Luigi Di Bella. But there,
as
is often the case in Italy, the people
have taken to the streets to express
their views, turning choice in medicine
into
a fundamentally political issue,
related to
concepts of democracy as well as science.
In America and Canada, countless physicians
and research scientists working especially
in the
field of innovative
cancer treatments
have been pushed over the national
boundaries, into Mexico or to off-shore
islands like
the Bahamas. During the
early nineties,
a number of herbal practitioners
were sent to prison for contravening the
laws which
govern the use
and
prescription of herbs. Throughout
the eighties and nineties, numerous
practitioners have been brought before
professional
disciplinary panels
for
practising
alternative
or complementary medicine. In 1995,
armed FDA officers, in search of
B vitamin
complexes, raided
the laboratory
and
offices of
one
of America's leading nutritional
doctors, Jonathan
Wright. Clinic workers were made
to raise their hands and stand
against the
wall, while officers pointed guns
at them. It took the agents, with the
help of police, fourteen hours to
strip the clinic of all equipment and its
vitamin and
food supplement
stocks.
In 1989, a French Canadian scientist
and pioneer of microscopy, Gaston
Naessens, was put on
trial in Quebec.
After forty
years' research, Naessens, had
concluded that it was possible to diagnose
cancer by observing the life-history
of
micro-organisms in the blood. The
Canadian government and
the medical establishment indicted
Naessens on
charges of manslaughter
as well as
the
illegal
practice
of medicine. More recently, another
French Canadian, medical doctor
Dr Guylaine
Lanctot, resigned
from the Royal College
of Canadian
Physicians, rather than stand disciplinary
trial over her position on vaccination
and what she
had termed
The Medical
Mafia, in
her book of that name.
In Britain, in 1990, powerful individuals
within orthodox medicine and
medical science, tried
to shut down the
Bristol Cancer
Help Centre. They gave world-wide
publicity to bogus research results
claiming that anyone going to
the Centre
was three times more likely to
die of cancer than
someone
who sought
orthodox help.
In 1997,
vested interests in science and
the pharmaceutical industry managed
to
persuade the new
