IRELAND
Irish Independent
A drug company, which has records of children who underwent experimental vaccine trials in baby homes, has said it will “respond fully” to those requesting their own personal data.
A spokeswoman for GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) was commenting after the use of trial vaccines on children in orphanages between 1960 and 1973 re-emerged in the wake the baby deaths controversy at St Mary’s mother and baby home in Tuam, Co Galway.
A €2m state probe into the vaccine trials was abandoned in 2006 by former health minister Mary Harney after a court challenge.
Victor Boyhan, a councillor in Dun Laoghaire Rathdown, who was in the care of the Church of Ireland run Bird’s Nest home, yesterday called for an inquiry before an Oireachtas committee into the drugs trials.
A Department of Health report confirmed in 2000 that 123 residents of Dublin children’s homes were used in vaccine trials by the Wellcome drug company. It suggested some children used in one trial may have been more susceptible to polio infection as a result.
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