Back in 1975, Natalie Bralee-Brett was given a dura mater graft – a piece of membrane collected from dead bodies – and now she says has been left fearing for her future
A woman “living with a death sentence” after the NHS inserted implants from dead bodies inside her as a child is demanding answers.
Natalie Bralee-Brett was born with spina bifida, a defect caused by space between the brain and the spinal cord. The 53-year-old was then infected with an incurable brain disease when she was three during surgery Great Ormond Street Hospital, and operation has caused her a lifetime of issues.
Her mother Maureen was told by medics that Natalie would have an improved and prolonged life if they operated on her using a new procedure. But she claims she was not informed that it actually involved taking membrane taken from dead bodies, before being inserted into Natalie’s spinal cord.
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As her health deteriorates, Natalie said in an interview on Sky News that the treatment she had as a child could end up killing her – and that she now wants answers. The woman says bleeding on her brain is causing memory loss, and detailed how she is living in fear of what is ahead for her and for her family.
The procedure, which was common in the 1970s, has left her terrified by what is ahead. Her condition has just 52 confirmed cases across the world and struggling Natalie is at high risk of dementia – and has been told she could suffer a catastrophic stroke at any moment.
“The pattern seems to be every time I go for a scan, I’m being shown to have more bleeding,” she said. “And the last scan showed that I also had inflammation. It’s always hanging over you because you get a headache, and you think ‘is this going to turn into something worse?’
“And because of being at risk of a stroke it’s constantly there, and it’s a condition that is going to get worse. Living with a death sentence, this is the only way I could describe it. Because every day, if you get a headache, you’re thinking ‘is this a sign of an episode that is linked to this problem? Is it a stroke?'”
“I want to know why I’ve got this problem. And that probably makes me more angry than actually having to deal with this condition.”
Harvard Professor Steven Greenberg, one of the world’s leading ICAA experts, said: “It is a heartbreaking tragedy We hope and believe the numbers will be limited. The hope is that we’re talking hundreds.
Doctors believe there are three possible causes of the illness: cadaveric material introduced into a body during surgery, the use of human growth hormones containing cadaveric material and surgical tools not sufficiently sterilised.
Professor Greenberg explained: “When I was in medical school, one of my professors said ‘the I stands for I, the doctor caused the problem’. And in the case of iatrogenic CAA, this is kind of a heartbreaking echo of an era when it appeared that a good neurosurgical procedure was to use tissue from human cadavers to close defects in the nervous system.
“And I am not a surgeon and I certainly wasn’t practising at the time. But my understanding is that it appeared to be good natural biological material for closing up areas and then had this unexpected and tragic effect of introducing some kind of protein that would later cause disease in the brain.”