new variant CJD

Young people die of new variant CJD, and there is silence.

My information is that there have been more than forty cases diagnosed of new variant CJD.

We live daily with the problem of the victims of new variant CJD, to which the rapporteurs refer.

Now finally may I take the opportunity to make a further comment on new variant CJD because Mr Whitehead brought it up specifically.

New variant CJD (vCJD) is a rare, degenerative, fatal brain disorder.

Mr and Mrs Sinnott lost their 23-year-old daughter, Nina, to new variant CJD last May.

We have also learned a lot in the last year in relation to new variant CJD and that patients with a distinct genetic makeup are prone to it, not the entire population.

I have come to this debate today almost directly from a meeting with the relations of people who have lost children to new variant CJD, the human form of BSE.

It was epidemiological evidence, combined with pathological examinations which revealed that "new variant CJD" showed clear differences upon autopsy from previously-seen, con-ventional cases of CJD.

The Commissioner will know of the concern in my country, and probably in his also, at the danger, however remote, posed by new variant CJD in the matter of blood plasma products.

On the matter of listeria, this crisis came to a head in 1989 when over 200 babies and young children had been killed in preceding years, far more than died of new variant CJD.

The prion which causes BSE can be transmitted to humans where it can cause a type of CJD called "new variant CJD" (vCJD).

The use of plasma as an excipient in medicinal products coming from countries which have had no confirmed cases of new variant CJD is a recommended precautionary measure and the wording used of 'imported blood between Member States' is totally lacking in clarity, I suggest.

Only this week we hear of reports of outbreaks among the elk in the Colorado regions of the US and of new variant CJD outbreak among young men, young hunters - not the normal age group associated with CJD as we have over the years understood it to be.

It does not matter about blood banks or plasma banks in Europe - we cannot take them from countries in the EU where there has been BSE or new variant CJD so we have to look elsewhere, and we and others rely largely on the United States' supplies.

On Thursday, I shall call on all the Members of the European Parliament to imagine, leaving aside partisan divisions or whatever interests they may have, that tomorrow, in a year, in five years, in perhaps ten years, their son or daughter is afflicted by the terrible disease known as new variant CJD.

In 1998 he was appointed as the scientist member of Lord Phillips' Committee to review the UK Government's original Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy Inquiry and consider the emergence of BSE and new variant CJD and the actions taken, reporting in 2000.

Mr President, legislation which seeks to protect the public from a terrible brain disease such as new variant CJD should be drafted to complement measures already in place in Member States, to recognise the stage of the epidemic that we are at and have due regard to the body of scientific knowledge we have built up.

The 180 000 infected bovine animals in Great Britain, in addition to the 1 325 in the rest of Europe by the year 2000 and the 101 human cases of new variant CJD have raised serious issues about animal feed and have highlighted the far from harmless effect of this feed on the food chain.

Amendment No 4 which is unacceptable as written because the concern is not at the risk of new variant CJD to blood products but the still theoretical risk, not yet scientifically proven, that new variant CJD could be transmitted by them.

For plasma-derived products the issue of the assessment of risk of new variant CJD in blood is under very close scrutiny by the Committee of Proprietary Medicinal Products which advises the European Medicines Evaluation Agency in collaboration with the Spongiform Encephalopathy Advisory Committee.