GcMaf users 'not given protection they deserve'

More details have emerged of why 10,000 vials of GcMaf were seized from Immuno Biotech's Cambridgeshire production site.

It has been claimed to treat a number of conditions, including cancer, HIV and autism, and is used by 200 people in Guernsey.

However, the owner of the company behind the production, David Noakes, said that the regulator had inspected the wrong building – one a mile away from the laboratory where itactually produced GcMaf.

Gerald Heddell, the Medicine and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency's director of inspection, enforcement and standard, said an unannounced inspection of a production site was a rare event, as most manufacturing facilities were licensed and therefore were in regular contact with and underwent regular inspections by the MHRA.

'The fact is that what we inspected was not a legal facility, it was an unlicensed makeshift unit converted out of part of an office complex,' he said.

Mr Heddell said it therefore did not meet minimum requirements for medicinal manufacturing, such as having air filtration systems and other measures to keep the product sterile. It was being manufactured on a bench top.

Mr Heddell said that despite stringent laws governing the use of blood packs in drug manufacturing, the blood plasma starting material being used to make the product in this case stated it was 'not to be administered to humans or used in any drug products'.