As with many similar cases in the past, negotiations between the state and other parties for an out-of-court settlement to lawsuits in which former medical patients and bereaved family members are seeking compensation from the importer of dried dura mater have been making little progress. The plaintiffs filed the lawsuits because the patients contracted Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease following transplants of infected dried dura mater in brain operations.
The CJD compensation suits have been filed in Otsu, Shiga Prefecture, and Tokyo since 1996. The defendants in these suits are the German pharmaceutical company that manufactured and sold dried dura mater, the Japanese importer and the Japanese government. The plaintiffs have been blaming the former Ministry of Health and Welfare for its failure to promptly prohibit the import and use of such dura mater. But the state has denied any illegality, claiming that in light of the conventional wisdom in medical and pharmaceutical circles at the time and the responses of other countries, it was extremely difficult for the ministry to foresee the danger of illness. The government, therefore, has been refusing to accept any out-of-court settlement premised on its responsibility.
However, quite some time before the 1980s, when the patients underwent operations, research papers had pointed out that the sterilization of dried dura mater was not perfect. And the U.S. government had issued a warning in 1987 when the first victim was reported. It is a fact that while other countries took steps to act on this information, including import bans, Japan did not take any countermeasures until 1997. Cases of people becoming ill with CJD after undergoing brain operations about 10 years ago are still emerging today. Despite differences in positions, therefore, the government should step up efforts to assist patients through out-of-court settlements as soon as possible and establish a new relief system toward the eradication of drug-related damage. CJD is a fatal illness in which the brain turns spongelike and the patient rapidly suffers from disturbed consciousness. At present there is no effective treatment. The prime suspect is a prion, an infected protein that also causes mad cow disease. Dried dura mater is extracted from cadavers and processed into a medical product.