FIFTY French children were contaminated with Creutzfeldt Jakob Disease (CJD), the human equivalent of madcow disease, from growth hormones administered in 1985-1986, it emerged here yesterday.
Health authorities continued to prescribe the hormones after a June 1985 ban took effect, an investigating magistrate, Ms Marie Odile Bertella Geffroy, announced.
The revelations could lead to new criminal indictments on charges of poisoning against the health officials involved. Five officials were earlier indicted for involuntary manslaughter, after the negligence of health authorities became known in 1992.
Judge Bertella Geffroy's investigation showed that growth hormones made from human corpses, and suspected of CJD contamination, were distributed after July 1985, although the French Pharmacy and Medicine Directorate had forbidden the use of such products from June 17th, 1985.
Until yesterday's revelations, French officials had always denied that distribution of the suspect growth hormones continued after they were withdrawn from the market.
Some 20,000 doses of growth hormones were distributed between June 1985 and the beginning of 1986, despite the ban. Judge Bertella Geffroy is investigating allegations that health authorities did not destroy stocks because they were costly.
The case is reminiscent of another 1980s French medical scandal, in which 1,300 French haemophiliacs and recipients of blood transfusions were infected with the HIV virus because the French Health Ministry knowingly administered contaminated blood. More than 400 people died of AIDS related illnesses as a result. It is also hauntingly similar to the hepatitis C scandal in Ireland.
Horrifically, many French children suffering from stunted growth were started on the growth hormones after they were banned.
More than 1,000 children who received treatment with potentially contaminated hormones in France in 1984 and 1985 are at risk. Fifty children have since contracted the disease or died.
Respected scientists, such as Prof Luc Montagnier of the Pasteur Institute, warned as early as 1980 that adequate precautions were not being taken. In 1992, a story published by Le Monde led to an investigation at the request of the Health Ministry. At the time, no children were known to have been contaminated.
But the men put in charge of the investigation, Prof Jean Claude Job, president of the France Hypophyse association, and Prof Jean Dangoumeau, head of the Pharmacy and Medicine directorate, were directly implicated in the affair.
"We think the contamination happened from a lot which was made at the end of 1983 or 1984 and that, although we cannot exclude that one or two additional cases may surface, it is not the beginning of an epidemic," Mr Dangoumeau concluded in his report.
Mr Bernard Kouchner, then minister of health, commissioned a second report, on the basis of which Judge Bertella Geffroy, began legal proceedings at the end of 1992.
The second report established that the hospital pharmaceutical distribution centre failed to recall hormones after they were banned in June 1985.
In 1993 the French government recognised responsibility in the affair and proposed compensation to the families of victims, on condition that they renounce legal action against the state and the institutions responsible.