Long justice

It is an almost forgotten medical scandal that killed 111 people here in France, all treated with infected growth hormones in the 1980s.

After a 17-year wait the families of those who died will finally get their chance to face the accused in court, and perhaps be given the answers to the questions as to not only why but also how it was allowed to happen.

In the dock are seven doctors and chemists – now mostly retired – who are charged with gross negligence and involuntary manslaughter.

Those who have brought the case, which opened on Wednesday, are the families who sought treatment for their children’s below-normal growth patterns, but instead lost their loved ones to a needless and agonising death from Creutzfeldt-Jakob syndrome.

The first victim died in 1991 at the age of 18. The last victim died in August last year at the age of 29.

It is hard to pinpoint which has been the biggest disservice done to these families over the years. They were subjected to deceit and flagrant disregard for what should have been considered norms of ethical medical practice, even at the time.

When they questioned some of the symptoms their children were displaying or even started suggesting the possibility themselves of Creutzfeldt-Jakob, they were at best fobbed off with excuses, or at worst completely ignored.

United States researchers at the time had already alerted their French counterparts of the risks that might be associated with using growth hormones extracted from corpses. They preferred to follow the practice of using synthetically manufactured hormones – now a medical standard.

But for some reason, the French ignored the warning and compounded their error with unacceptable procedures.

It transpired that the conditions for extracting, maintaining and distributing the growth hormone were by any standards, literally criminal, with the process being carried out in conditions far from sterile and from sometimes putrefying corpses.

So without knowing it the parents, rather than providing a solution to their children’s below-normal growth pattern, were in fact allowing them to be injected for years on a daily basis with the very hormone that would prove to kill them. And none of the medical professionals responsible prevented it from happening.

The seven accused have all pleaded not guilty and in there defence has been the claim that there was insufficient monitoring at the time of the often closed and secretive world of scientific investigation. They plead innocence through ignorance of the potential dangers.

The state, and in particular the ministers responsible, are not being held to account, even though they allowed the association responsible, the France Hypophyse, to operate as a monopoly without it being independently monitored. There were no external controls

Today – the only growth hormones offered are synthetic ones – the medical profession has learned from its lesson – but at what cost.