The Paris prosecutor has cleared Israeli pharmaceutical giant TEVA’s French division of any operational failures after the death of a 92-year-old man last month.
A preliminary investigation showed there was no trace of the sedative zopiclone in the drugmaker's diuretic furosemide, TEVA said in a statement;
The prosecutor stated that there is no connection between the Teva plant in Sens, France, where the drug Furosemide 40 mg was packed and the apparent substitution of those tablets, as was reported by a pharmacist in the town of Saint-Malo.
France's pharmaceutical watchdog ANSM had asked pharmacies to take 190,000 boxes of TEVA's drug off their shelves just two days before the man died, saying they may contain zopiclone.
"The results of the investigation clear TEVA of all suspicion of failure in its operations," The company's CEO Jeremy Levin said.
TEVA, the world's leading generic drugmaker, said ANSM's decision to recall the drugs had been the right one, even though it proved unnecessary in retrospect.
Teva has a direct presence in about 60 countries and currently employs approximately 46,000 people around the world.
But in the meantime a boycott campaign against Teva was launched by the ’France-Palestine Solidarity’ Association.
In a letter to Luc Besançon, General Secretary of the International Pharmaceutical Federation, the Simon Wiesenthal Director for International Relations, Shimon Samuels,denounced the FPS campaign against the Israeli company.
The letter explained that, “reportedly, a FPS spokesman, Jacques Jakubowicz, has sent letters to pharmacies in Paris suburbs demanding that they discontinue sale of TEVA medicines, based on charges against the company that its drug Furosemide contained a soporific. Tests on recalled products have now disproved the charges and TEVA has been vindicated by a French court.”
Samuels added that “the outrageous FPS order, signed by Jakubowicz, goes on to explain that the campaign is based solely upon the company’s Israeli identity.”
He emphasized that “our Centre does not promote TEVA over any other generic producer, but ‘’we emphatically oppose the politicization of medicine.’’
The Centre called on the International Pharmaceutical Federation to “vigorously condemn the FPS boycott campaign and, thereby, ‘’ensure that health and medicine remain above any political conflict in whatever region of the world.”
“The boycott of TEVA is so redolent of the Nazi campaign, “Kaufen Nicht bei Juden” (“Do Not Buy from Jews”). What began with boycott ended with genocide and the deaths of over sixty million in Europe and beyond.’’
Samuels said the current boycott of Israeli products arguably ''violates anti-discrimination provisions of the European Union.”