Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease

EDM number 99 in 2009-10, proposed by Mike Hancock on 18/11/2009.
Categorised under the topic of Diseases.

That this House notes the 171 deaths and confirmed cases of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD) and the four currently surviving victims of the disease in the UK, including four through blood transfusion compared with three in total in the US; congratulates and welcomes the work of Christine Lord, following the tragic death of her son Andy from vCJD at the age of 24, in establishing a website, www.justiceforandy.com, and producing a BBC South documentary Who Killed My Son; asks the BBC to screen the documentary nationwide; further asks the Government to commission further research to establish common factors, such as school catering and vaccines among vCJD victims in South Hampshire as well as elsewhere in the country including the cases of two young men from Eastleigh near Southampton who died of vCJD within weeks of each other, and who had both received polio vaccines from the same batch; further notes the Written Answer from the Minister of State for Health on 11 March 2008, giving a vCJD sub-clinical prevalence estimate of up to one in 1,400 of the population; and further asks that the Government completes its evaluation of screening for prions in blood supply and other possible measures to protect the blood supply, in light of the conclusions reported in the 15th annual report of the National Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease Surveillance Unit, that blood transfusion is the most effective transmission route for vCJD.

This motion has been signed by a total of 41 MPs, 1 of these signatures have been withdrawn.