Relatives appeal over French growth hormone deaths

Relatives of patients who died after being prescribed growth hormones are appealing a 2009 court ruling which cleared doctors who had prescribed the hormones.

AFP

Since the trial’s first hearing in 2008, five patients have died years after taking growth hormones which were infected with the Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a degenerative brain disease.

In the 1980s, doctors prescribed growth hormones to 1,698 children who were deemed too small. Two-hundred children have since died and relatives have launched legal action against paediatricians and biologists who allowed the drug to be prescribed.

In January 2009 a French court ruled that the doctors could not have known that the hormones – removed from corpses – were contaminated.

The prosecution is appealing against the court ruling and insists that three of the doctors should be held responsible for the deaths.

On Monday, hundreds of families converged on Paris to witness the trial. Although relatives of the victims hope that French judges will condemn several doctors, many have lost hope.

“I have come today, but without much hope. I am left to take responsibility for this treatment that was given to my son. That’s not enough,” Lea Le Thaeno, mother of Benoît, who died at the age of 28, told the AFP wire service.

More deaths may be expected in coming years as the Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease has an incubation period of over 30 years and may be transmitted to the patient’s children.