Trial into French growth hormone scandal begins

Wed Feb 6, 2008 8:20am EST


By Thierry Leveque

PARIS, Feb 6 (Reuters) - Seven French former medical officials went on trial on Wednesday after a 17 year-long investigation into contaminated growth hormones that caused the death of more than 100 people from Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. The doctors and pharmacists face maximum terms varying from 3 to 10 years if convicted. They face charges of aggravated deception, manslaughter and causing unintentional injury.

The case, which carries echoes of a separate scandal over HIV contaminated blood transfusions in the 1990s, centres on a programme to treat children affected by short stature with growth chromones extracted from human pituitary glands.

More than 100 people on the programme died after being contaminated with the rare Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, which attacks the brain, causing rapid dementia and death.

The connection between Creutzfeldt-Jakob diseae and the pituitary gland was established in 1990. The United States withdrew the hormone States in 1985 following three deaths.

Luc Montagnier, the French scientist who identified the AIDS virus, warned colleagues at the Pasteur Institute in a 1980 note that the hormone they were extracting from the pituitary gland could be a carrier of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.

He advised special care should be taken when buying glands to produce the treatment.



BITTERNESS

The seven defendants acknowledge making mistakes, but argue the risks connected with the growth hormone treatment were not known at the time.

"It's true it's easy today in 2008 to say there was a risk. But in 1983, in 1985, was the risk certain?" Benoit Chabert, one of the defence lawyers told reporters. "They acted based on the state of knowledge at the time." Around 200 relatives of the victims are expected to attend the trial, which is expected to last until the end of May and many were quoted in the press expressing a deep sense of bitterness over the affair.

"We are finally going to come face to face with the high and mighty officials who caused this tragedy," Jeanne Goerian, whose son, Eric died after the treatment, told the Le Parisien daily.

The defendants include Jean-Claude Job, 85, former president of the France-Hypophyse association and Fernand Dray, former head of a research unit at the prestigious Pasteur Institute, who also faces corruption charges over the affair.

Investigators found evidence that France-Hypophyse, an association that had a monopoly on collecting and distributing pituitary glands from corpses across France and eastern Europe, often worked in unhygienic conditions.

The Institut Pasteur'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 the team bought glands from operation theatre orderlies throughout the 1980s for meagre sums of between 35 and 50 francs (5.00-7.50 euros).

Half of the 120,000 organs acquired in 1983-88 came from corpses in Bulgaria and Hungary. Many appear to have been procured from neurological or infectious wards, the report said. (Writing by James Mackenzie, Editing by Matthew Jones)



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