Hospital sterilization in need of reform

A Melbourne hospital had to warn former patients that despite their efforts to sterilize instruments, they might have contracted a fatal brain disease, according to the Australian Canberra Times. Though the lack of knowledge about the disease was not the fault of the hospital, and symptoms did not appear until months later, it still seems as if the hospital, knowing that these diseases exist, should have used disposable instruments on the off-chance that the disease was present.

More than 1,000 patients were contacted after the hospital learned that a man died earlier that year of a disease that withstands normal sterilization. The patient was diagnosed with the rare Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease during an autopsy that took two months. The disease is not the same as variant CJD, also known as mad cow disease. The risk of transmission of CJD is small, but the hospital must notify patients nonetheless.

Can you imagine getting a letter explaining that you may have contracted a rare and fatal disease through treatment of your own medical problems? It is some consolation that the chance of transmittal is slim, but there is always the possibility the disease will show up later, perhaps during an autopsy.

The man had brain surgery twice in 2003 but was only just diagnosed with CJD recently. All brain or spinal patients were contacted after the disease was discovered.

The hospital must also replace its entire stock of neurosurgical instruments and re-sterilize all surgical instruments. Only five cases in the world have been reported as being transmitted through equipment, the lastest happening in Australia during the 1970s.

The man who died was being treated at the hospital for malignant brain tumors, separate from the CJD. Symptoms of CJD did not appear until six months after the last brain operation on the infected man. Luckily for anyone who dies from the disease in California, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger recently signed a bill making necrophilia illegal, according to Reuters.

It is amazing that this is even necessary. Lawmakers say that they do not know the full extent of the problem but that through a scattering of incidents over the past 10 years, lawyers have not been able to charge anyone with the crime because there was no legislation specifically naming necrophilia. If the accused worked in a mortuary they could not even be hit with breaking and entering.

The convicted now stand with up to eight years in prison. This criminal act is now a felony. The law was finally pushed through after a drunken man passed out on the corpse of an elderly woman in a San Francisco funeral home. The man was not charged with any crimes.

The first attempted banning of necrophilia in California happened last year when a man was thought to have had sex with the corpse of a 4-year-old girl. It is great that an act as disgusting and disgraceful as this will now be prosecuted (the man got off because there was nothing to charge him with under California law), but it says something about society that there must even be a law about this kind of thing. It is a sad state of affairs when someone suspected of an act as heinous as this cannot be persecuted. So, do all the crazies come to California or what?

Now that Gov. Schwarzenegger has passed this law, and we know that in Australia the chances of contracting the disease CJD are extremely slim, we can all sleep a little better at night.