French Doctors On Trial For CJD Deaths

French doctors on trial for CJD deaths after hormone 'misuse'
· Manslaughter charges over brain disease scandal
· Trial hears of delays and sloppiness in late 1980s

Angelique Chrisafis in Paris
Thursday February 7, 2008

Guardian

Seven doctors and pharmacists went on trial yesterday over the deaths
of more than 100 people from Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease which occurred
years after the victims were treated, while still children, with
tainted human-growth hormones.
The long-awaited trial concerning one of France's biggest public
health scandals opened yesterday as 200 relatives of the victims
packed a Paris courtroom to hear health officials face charges that
included manslaughter and deception.

Up to the late 1980s children in France who had stunted growth were
treated with hormones collected from the pituitary glands of human
corpses. Britain, the US and a dozen other countries banned these
hormones in 1985 following the death of a 21-year-old American which
suggested a possible link to the debilitating and fatal brain disease
CJD. A synthetic equivalent was used instead.

France, however, continued with the old method until 1988. Security
and hygiene rules were tightened for the procedures, but prosecutors
argue that those requirements were largely ignored.

In 1992, after the death of a 15-year-old from CJD in France, dozens
of other families decided to sue. French investigators raised
questions about shoddy preparation and collection methods, noting that
untrained workers had extracted the growth hormones.

The doctors and administrators, most now in their 70s and 80s, are
accused of ignoring warning signs, and obscuring the dangers of CJD
infection.

Of 1,698 children treated in the 1980s, 110 have succumbed to the rare
disease, which attacks the brain, causing rapid dementia and death.
Hundreds of others live in fear of the disease that often lies dormant
for many years.

One victim, Bernadette, who received weekly growth hormone injections
in her early teens, was struck at 18 by sudden anxiety attacks and
garbled speech interspersed with bouts of flu-like symptoms. At 20,
her balance, speech and sight faltered and she could not control her
body. "It was as if she was possessed," her mother told Le Monde.

Baffled doctors suggested Bernadette had "hysteria" and that the
family needed therapy. She was interned in a psychiatric ward and her
parents were denied access. On the ward, she met a patient who had
also been given growth hormones as a child and they compared symptoms.
In 1993 Bernadette died of CJD aged 21.

Jeanne Goerrian, president of a victims' association, said as she
arrived at court this week: "It is as if our children were here
watching us."

During an investigation the French scientist Luc Montagnier, who had
identified the Aids virus, said that in 1980 he had warned colleagues
at the Pasteur Institute that the hormone they were extracting from
pituitary glands could carry CJD. He advised special care when buying
glands to produce the treatment.

Investigators found evidence that France-Hypophyse, an association
that had a monopoly over the collection and distribution of pituitary
glands from corpses across France and eastern Europe, often worked in
unhygienic conditions.

The Pasteur Institute's radio-immunology unit, which extracted the
hormones from the glands, is also accused of sloppiness in handling,
transporting and stocking the material.

An official 1992 inquiry found that the team at the unit bought glands
from theatre orderlies throughout the 1980s for meagre sums of 35-50
francs. Half of the 120,000 organs acquired between 1983 and 1988 came
from corpses in Bulgaria and Hungary. Many appear to have been
procured from neurological or infectious wards, the report said.

Defence lawyers say their clients are innocent and acted in good
faith, armed with the medical knowledge of their time. If convicted,
six of the defendants could face up to four years in prison. A
pharmacology professor, also charged with corruption, faces 10 years.

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2008
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