91997E2068

WRITTEN QUESTION E-2068/97 by Cristiana Muscardini (NI) to the Commission (16 June 1997)

Subject: Coordination of biomedical research

In its reply to question E-0535/97 ((OJ C 319, 18.10.1997, p. 103. )) of 11 April 1997 the Commission states that the Community has 'been able to achieve a high degree of coordination' in the spheres of biomedical and health research.

Can the Commission say how high a degree of coordination it has achieved between the 700 research networks to which it refers?

Answer given by Mrs Cresson on behalf of the Commission (15 July 1997)

The setting-up of more than 700 biomedical research networks has enabled cooperation among research workers to be initiated or boosted, the available resources to be pooled, duplication of effort and research to be avoided and critical mass to be achieved in the data needed for the epidemiological studies, more particularly as regards rare diseases or pathologies linked with hazards at work.

By way of an example: a project funded by the Community and coordinated by a British laboratory has enabled the existence of a new variant of Creutzfeld-Jakob disease to be established via the exchange of information among various European centres. This result is essential in understanding the inter-species transmission of prion-initiated neurodegenerative diseases and in drawing up a strategy for bovine spongiform encephalopathy.