HC Deb 14 July 1992 vol 211 cc672-3W
Miss Emma Nicholson

To ask the Secretary of State for Health what representations she has received about the indiscriminate removal of pituitary glands by mortuary technicians for human growth hormone processing.

Mr. Yeo

None.

Miss Emma Nicholson

To ask the Secretary of State for Health when the need for guidelines on the safe selection of glands used to make human growth hormone was first identified; when the guidelines were issued; and if she will make a statement.

Mr. Yeo

The need for selectivity in the collection of pituitaries was recognised from the time the treatment was first used. At the start of its trial, in 1958, the Medical Research Committee issued a direction that diseased pituitaries should not be collected. In 1977 it issued more specific criteria which excluded the collection of pituitaries from donors believed to have been suffering from various communicable or degenerative diseases. In 1981 the Department, which by then had taken over arrangements for the supply of the growth hormone, issued a new direction which specifically mentioned Creuzfeldt-Jakob disease among the exclusion criteria.