§ Miss Emma NicholsonTo ask the Secretary of State for Health if she will launch an investigation into the circumstances under which a number of height-deficient children were injected with Creuzfeldt-Jakob disease during clinical trials conducted by the national health service.
§ Mr. YeoThe background to this problem is already well documented in medical journals: the article "Friendly fire in medicine: hormones, homografts and Creuzfeldt Jakob disease" inThe Lancet (vol. 340: July 4 1992) includes a history and a full list of references. We are supporting research into the origins and transmission of CJD and keep all relevant developments under review.
A copy of The Lancet is available in the Library.
§ Miss Emma NicholsonTo ask the Secretary of State for Health what is her latest estimate of the extent of the contamination of human growth hormone with Creuzfeldt-Jakob disease.
§ Mr. YeoSo far six cases of Creuzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) have been confirmed among the 1,908 patients treated with human derived pituitary growth hormone and two more are suspected, one of them a patient who has recently died. I am advised that further cases are possible, but no reliable estimates of the extent of the problem can be made until we know more about the origins of CJD and its transmission.