MRI SCANNERS SAVED BY EU U-TURN

12.00.00am GMT Tue 19th Feb 2008

The European Parliament today approved a request by the European Commission to postpone and review a controversial health and safety directive on electro magnetic fields which would have restricted the use of Europe's high-tech MRI scanners, used to detect early signs of cancer amongst other things.

Local Liberal Democrat MEP Liz Lynne, Vice President of the Employment and Social Affairs Committee, had campaigned hard for a postponement of the directive after outcries from leading scientists and experts across the European Union.

Liz today expressed relief after the Parliament's vote:

"The decision to postpone the implementation of this directive is a victory for common sense. Health and safety legislation must be based on the latest medical and scientific advice. The medical profession's evidence has always been against restricting MRI scanner use, which is why I campaigned to have them left out of the directive in the first place.

"These machines are vital life-savers and have been used safely for 25 years. Limiting their use would have been a backward step in patient car and may lead to an over reliance on the use of technologies with proven health risks, such as X-Rays.

"The guidelines imposed by the directive are unnecessary and overcautious. MRI scanners pose no known health risks, and medical staff are already protected under the Medical Devices Directive. I hope a four-year delay will give experts the time to prove this.

"It is vital that the Commission now urges countries that have already transposed the legislation to repeal it at once to ensure that MRI use is not restricted in any EU Member State as a result of this badly drafted directive."

ENDS

Note to editors:

Liz Lynne was shadow for the Physical Agents Directive for the wider Liberal and Democrat Group in the European Parliament and worked hard at the time this directive went through the Parliament to exclude medical devices and static magnetic fields from its scope but without the political support of Socialist or Conservative MEPs.

Liz Lynne subsequently tabled a number of parliamentary questions to the European Commission asking them to consider an amendment to the 2004 Electro Magnetic Fields Directive as well as holding meetings with Commissioner Spidla to discuss the issue and speaking on the issue in debates in the European Parliament since 2005.

Last year Liz Lynne gave evidence to the House of Commons Select Committee on the use of scientific evidence in their review of the Electromagnetic Fields Directive. The House of Commons report critised the European Commission's use of scientific evidence.

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200506/cmselect/cmsctech/1654/1654.pdf

Liz Lynne is also a leading campaigner in the Alliance for MRI, a group comprising patients' groups, medical experts and politicians who together are seeking to avert the serious threat posed by EU health and safety legislation to the clinical and research use of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI).