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BMJ 2002;324:1294 ( 1 June )

News

Parents sue over contaminated human growth hormone

Alexander Dorozynski, Paris

The family of a woman who received growth hormone in 1985 and who went on to develop Creutzfeld-Jakob disease in 1999 and died in June last year is suing the Pasteur Institute and France-Hypophyse, an association that was responsible for the collection of pituitaries, for compensation.

The family refused the government's compensation offer of 300000 (£190 000; $276 000) and decided to sue to break the deadlock of a judicial investigation begun 10 years ago and still not completed.

According to the National Institute of Sanitary Surveillance, 81 people have died in France of Creutzfeld-Jakob disease after injections of growth hormone prepared by the Pasteur Institute from pituitary glands taken from cadavers in France and eastern Europe.

A centralised system involving the extraction of growth hormone by the Pasteur Institute was set up in 1973.

In 1985 it was reported that patients treated with growth hormone were at risk of developing Creutzfeld-Jakob disease. The use of growth hormone extracted from cadavers was then discontinued in the United States and several other countries. In the same year growth hormone was successfully produced by recombinant DNA techniques.

However, France continued to use extracted hormone, after adding another step of viral inactivation to the process, until 1988, when it switched to recombinant growth hormone.

Pascale Fachin, the patient whose parents initiated the lawsuit, received extracted growth hormone in 1985, when she was 14, because she had not reached her expected height.

She led a normal life until 1999, when Creutzfeld-Jakob disease was diagnosed. She died last year, at the age of 30.

© BMJ 2002
 

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