nvCJD Clause 2 : Blood donations

4.49 pm Clause 2 : Blood donations

Amendment 1

Moved by Baroness Masham of Ilton

1: Clause 2, page 2, line 22, at end insert "the blood supply is made safe through the implementation of prion filtration and that"

Baroness Masham of Ilton: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Morris of Manchester, is president of the Haemophilia Society and I am a vice-president. We both feel that blood safety is an absolute priority, particularly for the groups of people who rely on a regular supply of clean, safe blood. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Morris, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Archer of Sandwell, on their tireless efforts in championing the rights of people with haemophilia.

Amendment 1 aims to make a minor change to Part 2 of the Bill regarding the measures that need to be introduced to ensure that people with haemophilia are not given contaminated blood or blood products in the future. The amendment seeks to ensure that all diseases are covered by widening the potential range of solutions to blood diseases that can be used.

The current wording of the Bill proposes that people with haemophilia are offered a blood test for a list of conditions including hepatitis B, hepatitis C, syphilis and variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease-variant CJD. The challenge is that at present there is not a reliable blood test for variant CJD, unlike for other viral infections and blood-borne diseases. Detecting the infective prion that causes variant CJD is extremely difficult and as yet no one has been able to develop a test that would be reliable or effective.

However, an alternative approach to a blood test has been developed to ensure that all donated blood is free from the infective prion that causes variant CJD. This approach, prion filtration, effectively cleans the blood removing all prion whether infective or not. The P-CAPT filter has been designed to work directly with the existing technologies used by the UK National Blood Service and has been CE marked since 2006, meaning that it has passed EU-wide safety and efficacy testing, as required for it to be legally used in the UK.

In October, the Government's blood safety advisory body, SaBTO-the Advisory Committee on Safety of Blood Tissues and Organs-published advice stating that there is now sufficient evidence that the P-CAPT prion reduction filter reduces infectivity and successfully cleans blood to remove the infective prions that carry variant CJD.

The haemophilia group has had a really terrible time with HIV infection, hepatitis C and variant CJD and the risk of it. We must surely do all that we can

21 Jan 2010 : Column 1181

to protect those people. I am pleased that the noble Lord, Lord Morris of Manchester, my colleague of many years over matters relating to disability, is supporting this amendment. I wish the Bill godspeed and I beg to move.

Lord Morris of Manchester: My Lords, I am most grateful to my good friend the noble Baroness, Lady Masham of Ilton, for proposing this important amendment. As she said, we have worked in close rapport for over 40 years to enhance the status and improve the well-being of chronically ill and disabled people-she made her maiden speech on the Bill I enacted in 1970-which of course makes this an evocative moment for us both.

I diverge from her only very slightly today. She said before the debate that she was sure she was pushing an open door. In fact my door is off its hinges and I was delighted to add my name to hers as a signatory of this amendment. Thus I can be brief in my response, pointing as the noble Baroness did, to the emphasis placed in my speech on 17 March on the importance of prion filtration in removing the causative agent of variant CJD.

This debate takes place against a backcloth of human suffering on a scale that most people can barely imagine. A small and stricken community of barely 5,000 people, already disabled by a rare, lifelong blood disorder, haemophilia patients have twice been infected en masse by contaminated NHS blood and blood products. Ninety-five per cent of them were infected with hepatitis C, and one in four with HIV. Of the 1,243 haemophilia patients infected with HIV, only 361-29 per cent-are still alive. The much higher number of deaths among the hepatitis C-infected patients is still increasing.

As of now, an estimated 1,974 haemophilia patients have died from being infected in the worst ever treatment disaster in the history of the National Health Service. Should anyone dispute that assessment, they should look at the finding of distinguished statisticians that the contaminated blood disaster involved the haemophilia community in a loss of life more savage in proportion to the number of people at risk than the Black Death.

It is in that context that the sombre new threat of a third scourge facing the haemophilia community must be judged. Many hundreds of haemophilia patients have now been told by the Department of Health that they were prescribed blood from donors who subsequently died of variant CJD; indeed, a post-mortem on one such victim found variant CJD in his spleen.

The amendment addresses the new scourge and plainly warrants the support of this House.

Amendment 1 agreed.

Clause 6 : Regulations, short title, commencement and extent

Amendment 2

Moved by Lord Morris of Manchester

2: Clause 6, page 4, line 5, leave out subsection (1) and insert-

"(1) Regulations made by the Secretary of State under this Act are to be made by statutory instrument.




http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200910/ldhansrd/text/100121-0013.htm#10012120000796




http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200910/ldhansrd/text/100121-0013.htm#10012120000812




http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200910/ldhansrd/text/100121-0013.htm#10012120000791




Saturday, December 12, 2009

103RD MEETING OF THE SPONGIFORM ENCEPHALOPATHY ADVISORY COMMITTEE


http://seac992007.blogspot.com/2009/12/103rd-meeting-of-spongiform.html





1: J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry 1994 Jun;57(6):757-8

Transmission of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease to a chimpanzee by electrodes contaminated during neurosurgery.

Gibbs CJ Jr, Asher DM, Kobrine A, Amyx HL, Sulima MP, Gajdusek DC.

Laboratory of Central Nervous System Studies, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD 20892.

Stereotactic multicontact electrodes used to probe the cerebral cortex of a middle aged woman with progressive dementia were previously implicated in the accidental transmission of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) to two younger patients. The diagnoses of CJD have been confirmed for all three cases. More than two years after their last use in humans, after three cleanings and repeated sterilisation in ethanol and formaldehyde vapour, the electrodes were implanted in the cortex of a chimpanzee. Eighteen months later the animal became ill with CJD. This finding serves to re-emphasise the potential danger posed by reuse of instruments contaminated with the agents of spongiform encephalopathies, even after scrupulous attempts to clean them.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=8006664&dopt=Abstract



Sunday, January 17, 2010

Human tissue, recovered from a donor history indicated increased risk factors for Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease Lions Eye Bank


http://creutzfeldt-jakob-disease.blogspot.com/2010/01/human-tissue-recovered-from-donor.html



Saturday, January 16, 2010


Evidence For CJD TSE Transmission Via Endoscopes 1-24-3 re-Singeltary to Bramble et al


http://creutzfeldt-jakob-disease.blogspot.com/2010/01/evidence-for-cjd-tse-transmission-via.html



Friday, November 20, 2009

SaBTO Advisory Committee on the Safety of Blood, Tissues and Organs Summary of the Eighth Meeting, 27 October 2009


http://vcjdtransfusion.blogspot.com/2009/11/sabto-advisory-committee-on-safety-of.html




Sunday, May 10, 2009

Meeting of the Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathies Committee On June 12, 2009 (Singeltary submission)



http://tseac.blogspot.com/2009/05/meeting-of-transmissible-spongiform.html




http://vcjdtransfusion.blogspot.com/2009/04/more-blood-products-collected-from.html





Monday, August 17, 2009

Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathy Agents: Safe Working and the Prevention of Infection: Annex J,K, AND D Published: 2009


http://creutzfeldt-jakob-disease.blogspot.com/2009/08/transmissible-spongiform-encephalopathy.html



Friday, July 17, 2009

Revision to pre-surgical assessment of risk for vCJD in neurosurgery and eye surgery units Volume 3 No 28; 17 July 2009


http://creutzfeldt-jakob-disease.blogspot.com/2009/07/revision-to-pre-surgical-assessment-of.html



Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Biosafety in Microbiological and Biomedical Laboratories Fifth Edition 2007 (occupational exposure to prion diseases)


http://creutzfeldt-jakob-disease.blogspot.com/2008/08/biosafety-in-microbiological-and.html



Sunday, August 09, 2009

CJD...Straight talk with...James Ironside...and...Terry Singeltary... 2009


http://creutzfeldt-jakob-disease.blogspot.com/2009/08/cjdstraight-talk-withjames.html



Tuesday, August 18,

2009 BSE-The Untold Story - joe gibbs and singeltary 1999 - 2009


http://madcowusda.blogspot.com/2009/08/bse-untold-story-joe-gibbs-and.html




Saturday, January 2, 2010

Human Prion Diseases in the United States January 1, 2010 ***FINAL***



http://prionunitusaupdate2008.blogspot.com/2010/01/human-prion-diseases-in-united-states.html




my comments to PLosone here ;



http://www.plosone.org/annotation/listThread.action?inReplyTo=info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fannotation%2F04ce2b24-613d-46e6-9802-4131e2bfa6fd&root=info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fannotation%2F04ce2b24-613d-46e6-9802-4131e2bfa6fd






TSS