Denis Naughten (Roscommon-South Leitrim, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank Fianna Fáil for giving me an opportunity to speak on this issue this evening. I commend the Minister and the Government for acting so quickly to establish a commission of inquiry into what occurred in the mother and baby homes. It is important that one particular action that went on in some of these institutions is not again brushed under the carpet. I am referring to the use of some children in care homes as human guinea pigs by the State, through its agencies, and the British pharmaceutical company Wellcome as part of the clinical trials of the three-in-one whooping cough vaccine. As the Minister is aware, from 1961 up until the late 1970s children were used to test out vaccines, because during that period there had been a significant increase in the number of adverse reactions to the whooping cough vaccine. A former Minister for Health admitted while in office that the side effects generally recognised as occurring occasionally following the administration of the whooping cough vaccine included mental retardation and paralysis. The trials that took place in 1973 were approved by the National Drugs Advisory Board and a licence was issued to Wellcome for a two-year period, yet these trials were still ongoing in January 1976.

There are serious and significant question marks over the consent, if any, that was sought or obtained to use children in care homes as guinea pigs, as well as the ethics of such trials. The Laffoy commission had powers to compel and secure documents and to provide answers. Documents were obtained but, because of a High Court judgment, they were never acted upon. While the Minister for Health is preparing legislation to preserve testimony given in confidence by abuse survivors of these institutions, despite earlier assurances that such information would be destroyed, we now find out that documents provided by the successors of Wellcome, the religious orders that were responsible for these homes and the State agencies that were involved in these clinical trials were returned to the original owners in 2012. The evidence that was given by victims on condition it would be destroyed is now being retained, but evidence that could throw some light on why these children - some of whom suffered long-term damage as a result of being involved in such trials - were treated as guinea pigs was returned to the successors of those who ignored these children's most basic constitutional right, which is the right to bodily integrity. Is this not a further abuse - current abuse - of the former residents of these institutions?

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