IRELAND
IrishCentral
James Wilson @jameswilson1919 July 18, 2017
A councilor from Clondalkin in south Dublin has revealed that he was used as a baby in a vaccine experiment whilst living at a Mother and Baby Home.
Francis Timmons spent the early years of his life at the Madonna Baby Home in Blackrock, Dublin and only learned as an adult that he had been used in medical trials during his time there.
The company GlaxoSmithKline Ireland wrote to Timmons informing him that he received two injections of diphtheria tetanus pertussis (DTP) vaccine alongside 18 other children living at the Madonna Baby Home.
The experiments hoped to solve a number of illnesses prevalent in children, such as diphtheria, tetanus, polio and whooping cough.
Questions were first raised about the use of orphaned children for such trials in the 1990’s and a report published in 2000 for Ireland’s Health Service Executive found that 52 infants from four mother and baby homes had been used in a trial that began in 1960.
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