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A POTENTIAL link has been
found between the human form of “mad cow” disease and a batch of polio
vaccine given to as many as 80,000 people.
Scientists have established that in 1994 two
teenagers who later developed the fatal brain condition variant Creutzfeldt
Jakob disease (vCJD) received an oral polio vaccine containing British
cattle material from the same batch. The victims have not been identified.
Drug companies
were advised in 1989 that they should not use bovine material from Britain
or any other country with BSE-infected herds, but a loophole emerged
because the guidelines from the Department of Health applied only to
injectable vaccines. Oral polio vaccines using British cattle products
continued to be manufactured and distributed.
It was only last year when the Government
formally withdrew them as a precautionary measure. Health advisers on the
Government’s Spongiform Encephalopathy Advisory Committee (SEAC) last night
emphasised that there was no causal link between the victims having the
vaccine and contracting the disease and that it could be coincidental.
They also told parents that they should not
withdraw their children from the polio vaccination programme. The
Department of Health made it clear that bovine material in vaccines today
comes from Australia, New Zealand, the United States or Canada.
Deirdre Cunningham, a member of SEAC and
director of public health in Lambeth, Southwark and Lewisham, said: “There
is absolutely no justification for ruining the vaccination and immunisation
programme.” The programme has virtually eliminated polio from Britain.
The coincidental link was revealed when
scientists from the national CJD surveillance unit in Edinburgh examined
possible connections between five vCJD victims from the Southampton area.
Medical records showed that two had received oral polio vaccine from the
same batch in 1994 when they were teenagers. One was a school-leaver and
the other about to go to college.
Most people receive the polio vaccines as
babies with a follow-up pre-school booster at about the age of four. It is
also offered to school-leavers and adults travelling overseas.
The batch of up to 80,000 doses was available
for a three-month period from October to the end of December in 1994 and
was distributed throughout the country. The batch was part of six million
identical doses that were available in a two-year period from 1994. No
other of the 113 vCJD victims received the vaccine from this batch.
Frances Hall, spokeswoman of the Human BSE
Foundation, said: “This possible link with vaccine must be investigated
very closely. Who knows if it is a coincidence or not?”
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