Growth hormone deaths blamed on MRC and DoH

A High Court judge last week held the Department of Health and the Medical Research Council to blame for the deaths of young adults from Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) who had been treated with human growth hormone.

In the first compensation claim over a pharmaceutical product to succeed in the British courts, Mr Justice Morland ruled that the two bodies were negligent in not passing on concerns raised by scientists that would probably have led to the treatment's suspension from July 1977. The decision means that only the families of patients who started the treatment after 1 July 1977 will be entitled to …