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In the late
1970s and early 1980s there was an outbreak of CJD among patients who had been treated
with human growth hormone that had been prepared by pooling pituitary gland tissue from
large numbers of cadavers [28]. At least one
cadaver must have had, or been incubating, CJD, and the result was that patients given
doses of the contaminated batch of human growth hormone died horribly of this invariably
fatal neurological degenerative disease. This was one of the great modern medical
disasters, now behind us because genetically engineered human growth hormone has replaced
the natural product. |