On the message boards...

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Thought I would send this thru to make sure everyone got to see it (thanx DK!)

The posts is referring to are on the message board at CJD Voice. Liz.

I REST MY CASE by Roussel

My post of Oct 12th and Nov 4th, on CJD VOICE., please read it twice and

hope you can see the danger. B. Braun Melsungen AG is manufacturing

surgical equipment and exporting it to all of us. Close your eyes, you

will not see the danger. I hope the governments and institutions that

are there to protect us are looking at this one. Manufacture these

instruments while your labs were full of prions will get to you

eventually, SOMEDAY, but people will wake up, keep importing this stuff,

pay good money for it, then, also pay for their medical expenses, good

sense for governments isn't it.

WAKE UP PEOPLE, it's in your local backyard and hospital/clinics.

See Nov 9 issue

http://www.mad-cow.org/

Surgical instruments could pass CJD between patients

November 8 1998 Times by Prescott and Steve Farrar

THE government faces a new health service crisis and a potential billion

pound bill, because of fears that equipment used in surgery is spreading

CJD, the human equivalent of " mad cow disease " . Scientific advisers to

the department of health confirmed yesterday that a specialist group has

been appointed to advise on cutting the risk of patients who undergo

routine operations contracting the fatal brain condition from the

implements used upon them in surgery.

The most radical option under discussion is destruction of almost all

equipment used in NHS operating theatres, at a cost which would run into

billions of pounds - especially as new equipment would then need to be

routinely disposed of after each operation, to ensure CJD was not passed

from one patient to another. Although this is one of several options,

scientists say it is the only way to be 100% safe.

No known sterilisation technique can kill the " prion " organism that

causes CJD, and nobody knows how many people harbour the disease,

meaning any estimate of the number of surgical implements carrying the

fatal " prion " is impossible. One scientist said yesterday that the

number of people incubating CJD could run to millions, meaning many

operations were being carried out on infected people, and infected

implements then reused.

Already, the government's advisers have called for more equipment to be

routinely disposed of after each operation than is currently required.

Ministers, they said, would have to decide how much money they could

afford to spend on the tougher policy, and on what scale the destruction

of implements took place.

" Even if it leads to a small reduction in the numbers who contract CJD

it will be worth it, " said Dr Crumpton, chairman of the joint

Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathy working group. He stood down

last month from the chairmanship of the the Advisory Committee on

Dangerous Pathogens (ACDP), which is studying the problem of CJD.

Crumpton also revealed that the ACDP has ordered that equipment used in

brain surgery should be separated from other implements, and not used in

different types of operation, because of the CJD risk.

Another scientist said this could prove just an interim step, and that

an order to destroy all equipment used in brain surgery could be on the

way.

" The risk wouldn't need to be very high at all before it would be

economically worthwhile throwing away instruments used on brain and

peripheral tissue, " said Dr Dealler, a microbiologist hired by

the Department of Health to devise a test to detect CJD in donated

blood.

A doctor said the problem was " immense " . Scalpel blades were already

thrown away after operations, but the operating theatre equipment

sterilised after each operation included the operating table and even

light switches.

Alan Duncan, shadow health minister, criticised the health department:

" It is time for ministers to stop being cagey about this. The public

needs to know the extent of the problem and the likely cost. " Tony

Minson, professor of virology at Cambridge University, said there had

been " a few cases where surgical implants have transmitted CJD " and that

precautions were needed.

Roussel