I packaged version 1.8 of gnu ddrescue and uploaded it to my launchpad Personal Package Archive (ppa). This is an unofficial package but it seems to work fine.

If you want to stick with official Ubuntu packages, do not add my ppa to your sources.list. You can still install the ubuntu-rescue-remix metapackages by hand. However, if you add my ppa to your sources.list to install the ubuntu-rescue-remix metapackages, you will be getting (the unofficial) gddrescue-1.8.

My ppa:
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/arzajac/ubuntu hardy main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/arzajac/ubuntu hardy main