Alain Mucchielli

Alain Mucchielli (born October 3, 1947, in Toulon) is a French biochemist and public health physician.

In 1975 Mucchielli obtained a PhD with a thesis on food irradiation at the Lille Institut Pasteur in collaboration with the CEA Cadarache Research Centre. After joining the Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale in 1977, his work focused on alpha-fetoprotein in Nice, France, and the trophoblast antigens in the Blond McIndoe Centre for Transplantation Biology, East Grinstead, England. In 1981, he obtained an MD with a thesis on antibody transfer from mother to fetus in the University of Nice.

In 1984, he engaged in street work. In 1987, along with seven other doctors, he co-founded a Red Cross Volunteer Centre for homeless people. Difficulties faced by people in this center committed him in harm reduction, and he organized in the early 1990s a medical care network for intravenous drug users.

This network supported about 500 drug users in the south of France from 1990 to 1997, and, since 1993, it provided substitution treatment for drug users suffering very difficult conditions.

In 1997, in Paris, he was "awarded the National Rolleston Award … for his advocacy of harm reduction in the face of opposition and doubt and for his efforts to bring about changes in Nice, a city badly affected by the problems arising from drug use and HIV".

In 2000, he was director of SAMU Social in Nice, which he held until he retired in 2009.

• L'héroïne, la cocaïne et le crack en France