Mum's battle for mad cow justice winning support
A mum fighting for justice for her dead son says she has been contacted by relatives of more than half a dozen other victims of the human strain of mad cow disease.
Christine Lord told in May how her 24-year-old son Andy Black went from a normal, healthy young man to a quadraplegic within six months after being diagnosed with variant Creutzfelt-Jakob disease.
He died in December last year.
Since telling her story she says there has been an overwhelming response from other families whose relatives have also died from the disease.
Her campaign website has received millions of hits.
A TV documentary Who Killed My Son? in which she featured in May is now expected to be screened nationwide later this year.
She said: 'I have found seven other young people living within 25 miles of here who have died of variant CJD.
'The number of viewers phoning in asking for a repeat of the documentary is 100 per cent more then The Apprentice, which Andy would have found funny as he loved that programme.
'Because of this it should be shown again nationwide in the autumn.'
It is not known how Andy contracted the deadly disease, but Christine, of Castle Road, Southsea, stopped giving her two children beef when he was about six years old because of the growing concerns which were being raised at the time over possible links between eating infected meat and the development of the human form of the disease.
She believes the government could have done more to prevent people dying from the disease and has started a crusade in memory of Andy and more than 200 other victims of variant CJD in the UK.
The website www.justice forandy.com lists the people she believes are to blame for the spread of BSE and include former agriculture, fisheries and food minister John Gummer, and former prime ministers John Major and Margaret Thatcher.
She said: 'We've also had more than five million hits on the website.
'Variant CJD is such a slow and gradual disease that there is no knowing how many more people are walking around with it,' she added.
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Thursday 24 May 2012
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