Magistrate accuses two in CJD poisoning case

A PARIS magistrate yesterday handed down the first two criminal indictments in the contaminated growth hormones scandal, in which French hospitals distributed medication tainted with Creutzfeldt Jakob Disease between 1984 and 1986.

Medical authorities were aware of the risk to which they exposed patients from May 1985, but distributed the drugs rather than destroy stocks worth more than £660,000. Forty two French children poisoned by the hormones have died since 1989, and at least 10 others now have CJD.

Judge Marie Odile Bertella Geffroy charged Mr Marc Mollet, the pharmacist at the Central Hospital Pharmacy (PCH) in Paris, who was responsible for distributing the hormones to hospitals throughout France, and his superior, Mr Henri Cerceau, the director of the PCH, with poisoning.

If convicted, they could be jailed for 30 years. Four other medical officials have been indicted for involuntary manslaughter. The charges against them could also be increased to the charge of poisoning.

Worldwide, 90 people contracted CJD from growth hormone treatment; more than 50 of these cases occurred in France. Only synthetic growth hormones, which carry no risk of transmitting CJD, have been used since 1988.

Judge Bertella Geffroy established that Mr Mollet and Mr Cercau put some 20,000 tainted doses of growth hormones on the market after a meeting on May 14th, 1985, of the Francehypophyse (France pituitary) association banned their use because of the risk of transmitting CJD.

The hormones are made from pituitary glands extracted from human corpses in hospital mortuaries. Although the risk of contagion was known, no attempt was made to exclude glands taken from diseased corpses. At the time, it was thought contaminated hormones could be purified by treating them with urea, but even this was not done.

Ms Monique Pelletier, a Paris lawyer who represents two families whose children died of CJD, told The Irish Times her clients were relieved to hear of the indictments.

"For the families, it's a sign that the case is moving ahead and that justice will be done. Over the past three years, many of the families have become impatient. In their minds, their children are dead add the crime was poisoning," she said.

The families of 17 of the 42 children killed by CJD contracted from hormones are suing the French government. "They are demanding public condemnation of those responsible," Ms Pelletier said. "They want it admitted that these people caused the death of their children, and they don't want it to happen again."

Judge Bertella Geffroy expects the case to be concluded within two years. In a similar case, 1,300 haemophiliacs and recipients of blood transfusions got AIDS from tainted blood; 400 have died.