Seven vaccine trials and two trials on infant milk formula were carried out on more than 600 babies and children;SOPA
= = = = = =
Two months ago, we learned about
children used as Guinea Pigs in Ireland.
In
1965, Hillary tested a measles vaccine called Glaxo Quintuple V CT21 on
up to 25 infants at Bessborough and St Patrick’s. One child died of
cardiac and respiratory failure two weeks after receiving the first
injection. “The available medical records do not suggest this child’s
death was in any way linked to the vaccine,” the report said.
The
trial of another measles vaccine in 1969 was run by Victoria Coffey, a
doctor who taught at Trinity College Dublin, and involved 250 children
at St Patrick’s home, where she was the medical officer. She received a
personal cheque for IR£230, about €5,000 in today’s money, from Glaxo
“to assist with the purchase of laboratory equipment”. It was followed
by a second cheque, also made payable to Coffey, for IR£250. To put the
value of the payments into further context, a redbrick artisan house
sold in Ringsend, Dublin 4 that year for IR£2,000.
(...)
In
November 1969, William Burland, a doctor at Glaxo’s head office in
England, wrote to the company’s official in Ireland about plans for
testing an experimental baby milk formula. The letter was marked “highly
confidential”. “I am looking for establishments such as homes for
illegitimate babies, etc where these investigations could be set up and
where there are sufficient numbers to enable us to have two groups of
babies, one fed with experimental milk, and one to act as controls,” it
said. “Do you think it would be possible to set up a trial of this
nature in Eire?”
Following
a meeting between Burland and nuns at Bessborough, the trial went ahead
in March 1968. The babies lined up for it had to be more than 7lb in
weight. It was conducted simultaneously with trials of the same
experimental milk in Malaya and Argentina.
In
the Cork home, 14 children were recruited as subjects. Eithne Conlon, a
GP to whom Glaxo offered a free airline flight in return for her
participation, reported that the infants “experienced moderate to severe
vomiting, moderate to severe wind, loose stools and green stools”.
Severe vomiting, regurgitation and irritableness were noted in nine
other children used for the trial at St Patrick’s. Glaxo’s L14 milk was
discontinued “due to the severity of the side effects”.
Also that Doctors were paid thousands for mother and baby home trials.
Two doctors who
blocked a state inquiry into vaccine trials they conducted on hundreds
of children in mother and baby homes received personal cheques from the
British pharmaceutical companies involved, last week’s report on the
institutions shows.
Two
other doctors who ran vaccine and baby-milk trials in homes in Dublin
and Cork were offered money and a free flight for a holiday in England.
Patrick
Meenan, a former president of the Medical Council of Ireland, and Irene
Hillary, who led the National Virus Reference Laboratory in University
College Dublin (UCD), made successful court challenges after being
called as witnesses to the Laffoy Commission on child abuse in
residential institutions. As a result, its investigation of vaccine
trials for Glaxo Laboratories and the Wellcome Foundation between 1960 and 1973 was shut down by the High Court in 2004.
It
has now emerged in the 3,000-page report of the commission of
investigation into mother and baby homes, published last Tuesday, that
Meenan and Hillary received combined payments of IR£3,950 in the early
1970s, the equivalent of about €60,000 in today’s money. This was in
return for conducting trials of unapproved vaccines for measles, polio,
diphtheria and whooping cough. Meenan and Hillary, who were both
professors of microbiology, are now dead.
The
600 children from the homes who were used in seven vaccine and two
infant milk trials were mostly unaccompanied, “illegitimate” by law, had
congenital conditions, or were of mixed race. Many of their mothers had
psychiatric disorders, mental illness, low IQ or were under the age of
consent. One mother was just 15.
The
commission found the trials were conducted illegally, without medical
or import licences, and without seeking the consent of the children’s
mothers.
The
report says the trials contravened ethical standards of the time,
including the Nuremberg code, the Helsinki declaration, and British
Medical Research Council guidelines.
According
to the report, Meenan, who was also the head of UCD’s faculty of
medicine, “appealed” to Wellcome in 1972 for a grant to employ a
laboratory technician and suggested that the company give him a
non-renewable grant of IR£1,650 by way of a personal cheque, which he
would then endorse and make payable to the university bursar.
“He
also recommended that a ‘personal grant’ of £650 be put in place [for
Hillary]”, the report states. At that time, she was about to commence a
trial of Wellcome’s modified three-in-one vaccine. Both payments were
made by personal cheques. Meenan received a second cheque the following
year for a further IR£1,650, bringing his payments to IR£3,300.
Glaxo
also promised a IR£250 grant to buy laboratory equipment in return for
the co-operation of Victoria Coffey, who was the medical officer for St
Patrick’s mother and baby home on Dublin’s Navan Road. She asked that
the payment be sent to the Medical Research Council of Ireland but it
was issued directly to Coffey and made payable in her name.
Coffey
wrote to Glaxo saying earlier “complications” in sourcing children for a
measles trial had been surmounted. Noting the company’s “offer for
financial assistance in the follow-up trial”, she said she “could easily
trial at least 250 children”. Eithne Conlon, a GP and deputy medical
officer for the Bessborough mother and baby home in Cork, was offered a
free air fare for a holiday in England “as reimbursement” when she
agreed to test baby milk in the home. The report does not state if she
accepted it.
The
commission found no evidence that any child was harmed by the trials,
but its report chronicles episodes of vomiting and “green diarrhoea” in
some children after being vaccinated.
Both
Wellcome and Glaxo were subsumed into the pharmaceutical multinational
GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) in 2000. The company has refused to say whether it
will contribute to any redress scheme for survivors of the
institutions.
It
said last week: “GSK understand that practices described in the report
make for difficult reading and our thoughts are with the families
involved. The report does not reflect how clinical studies are conducted
today. In today’s clinical studies, participants or their
parents/guardians must give their informed consent to participate after
being told about the study, its potential benefits and its potential
risks. Withdrawal from a clinical study remains the right of all
participants.
“Given
the lapse of time, GSK is unable to provide any further comment on the
historic events outlined in the report and its conclusions.”
About
9,000 of the 57,000 babies born in the 18 homes investigated died. In
the 1930s and 1940s, 40% of babies in the institutions died before their
first birthdays.
Some 56,000 women were incarcerated, 5,616 of them under 18.
= = =
Today, on the Sunday Times, we can read that
Children's minister urges GSK to compensate vaccine trial victimsRoderic O’Gorman,
the minister for children, has asked GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), the
pharmaceutical firm, to consider making “reparations” to the former
residents of mother and baby homes where vaccine trials were conducted
in the Sixties and Seventies.
Last
week O’Gorman wrote to Dame Emma Walmsley, GSK’s chief executive in
Britain, seeking “appropriate action” to meet the company’s moral and
ethical responsibility, after further detail about the trials emerged in
the final report of the commission of investigation into mother and
baby homes in January.
The commission, chaired by Judge Yvonne Murphy, said seven vaccine trials and two trials on infant milk formula were carried out on more than 600 babies and children in the homes, between 1960 and 1973, on behalf of Glaxo Laboratories and the Wellcome Foundation. These companies later became part of the GSK group.
