§ Mr. Jon Owen JonesTo ask the Secretary of State for Health what assessment he has made of the latest research published by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine into the projected number of cases of new variant CJD. [12161]
§ Mr. HoramThe Government recognise the need for predictions of the possible number of new variant CJD cases in the future, and welcome any work which leads towards this. However, there is still much we do not know about the disease, including important information on the incubation period, the route of infection, the level of exposure required to cause disease and the role of genetic susceptibility, so any predictions must be viewed with extreme caution. It is likely to be some time before we have enough information to make firm predictions of future numbers of cases.
§ Mr. David NicholsonTo ask the Secretary of State for Health how many people in the United Kingdom(a) contracted and (b) died from CJD in each of the last four years; and how many are estimated to have (i) contracted and (ii) died from the new variant of CJD. [13044]
§ Mr. HoramThe latest available information on Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease cases, including deaths, was published in a Department of Health press release on 6 January 1997, copies of which are available in the Library.