SMH -- THE federal government has begun an investigation into the safety of fertility drugs after overseas research showed the hormones - derived from pregnant or menopausal women's urine - could carry proteins similar to those linked to the fatal Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.
The Canadian study, published in the online journal PLoS One, for the first time confirmed the presence of the proteins in the drugs. They were not of the mutated form linked to the human version of mad cow disease, but the findings suggested these too might survive the production process, wrote study leader Neil Cashman, from the University of British Columbia.
