Eight families whose relatives contracted the fatal Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease after being treated with human growth hormone in childhood won the right last week to compensation from the UK government likely to total more than £1m ($1.6m).

The victory brings to 20 the number of growth hormone CJD cases in which the government will have to pay compensation as a result of court rulings. Among the eight families whose claims were successful last week are the widow and three children of Neil Kreibich, an orthopaedic surgeon who died of CJD in 1997 aged 37.

Mr Justice Morland, the judge handling the litigation, ruled in 1996 that the Medical Research Council (MRC), which ran the growth hormone programme from 1959, was negligent from 1 July 1977 in …