Family of CJD teenager in new court ordeal

The parents of a Belfast teenager dying from the human form of BSE were mounting a new legal fight today to have radical surgery performed in Northern Ireland.

Jonathan Simms’s desperate mother and father are pleading with the authorities to let him undergo world-first drug treatment in a final bid to slow down damage caused by variant CJD.

They won the right to have the blood-thinning compound Pentosan Polysulphate (PPS) injected into their 18-year-old son’s brain after the High Court in London ruled it was both lawful and in his best interests.

It is understood a Northern Ireland hospital has agreed in principle to allow the pioneering operation to be performed in its theatres.

But the distraught Simms family was now facing a legal re-run in Belfast High Court today because the original verdict does not cover the North.