By Anne Dachel
The San Francisco Chronicle put out the news that a federal advisory panel has endorsed testing an anthrax vaccine on children. This decision is raising some concerns.
"While an overwhelming majority of the panel endorsed conducting a study, several critics said such tests would be unethical, unnecessary and dangerous.
"'The trial would expose healthy children to substantial harm with no possibility of benefit,' said Vera Sharav of the Alliance for Human Research Protection, a New York advocacy group."
I have to wonder which parents out there would be willing to have their healthy children used in this experimentation. What kinds of enticements will there be to get people to sign their children up? Would money be offered and therefore children of the poor would more likely be the human guinea pigs? My first thought was that the children of the researchers would be logical choices. These scientists would surely be creating a vaccine so safe that it would be okay for their own kids, right?
By coincidence, someone brought a recent investigative report to my attention. This story was aired on the Irish television show, Prime Time, Oct 6, 2011. (This is not to be confused with ABC's Primetime. It's hard to imagine ABC News ever doing this kind of story examining the ethical practices of a pharmaceutical company in collusion with government officials.)
Burroughs Wellcome is the pharmaceutical company mentioned in this report and it has since been acquired by GlaxoSmithKline.
In the half-hour broadcast Prime Time's Katie Hannon revealed details of how children from mother and baby homes were used as test subjects by pharmaceutical companies who were trialing new vaccines in the 1960s into the 1970s. This testing was done on babies without the mothers' consent. These were vulnerable women and researchers and government officials knew it. I transcribed most of the broadcast below.
The records on these experiments are hidden away from the public. Even the people who were the test subjects can't access them. These babies were injected with experimental three in one and five in one vaccines. How many injections did they receive? Were there adverse events following the vaccinations? No one knows.
What does this say about the ethics of the vaccine industry?
Vaccine makers in the U.S. can't be sued for adverse reactions to their vaccines. It seems the drug industry enjoys blanket protection globally when it comes to the issue of vaccinations.
For those who would say that what was done in Ireland is an acceptable practice because the end was the production of a vaccine to fight disease, I would ask how they would feel about an experimental vaccine being tested on their children—without their knowledge or permission.
In the last segment we hear that the babies of these poor institutionalized women who died were sent to medical schools for dissection. This happened to hundreds of babies, again without the mother's knowledge or permission. And how many of these dead babies were also part of the vaccine trials?
Prime Time introduced the broadcast by saying,
“And most shocking of all, we’ll reveal for the first time how hundreds of [Irish] children were used for medical science, even in death.”
“All the women in there, they had no power.”
Prime Time’s Katie Hannon: “Their powerlessness left their babies uniquely vulnerable.”
“We were there for them to do whatever they wanted. We were the lowest of the lowest.”
--
Anne Dachel is Media Editor of Age of Autism.
By Anne Dachel
The San Francisco Chronicle put out the news that a federal advisory panel has endorsed testing an anthrax vaccine on children. This decision is raising some concerns.
"While an overwhelming majority of the panel endorsed conducting a study, several critics said such tests would be unethical, unnecessary and dangerous.
"'The trial would expose healthy children to substantial harm with no possibility of benefit,' said Vera Sharav of the Alliance for Human Research Protection, a New York advocacy group."
I have to wonder which parents out there would be willing to have their healthy children used in this experimentation. What kinds of enticements will there be to get people to sign their children up? Would money be offered and therefore children of the poor would more likely be the human guinea pigs? My first thought was that the children of the researchers would be logical choices. These scientists would surely be creating a vaccine so safe that it would be okay for their own kids, right?
By coincidence, someone brought a recent investigative report to my attention. This story was aired on the Irish television show, Prime Time, Oct 6, 2011. (This is not to be confused with ABC's Primetime. It's hard to imagine ABC News ever doing this kind of story examining the ethical practices of a pharmaceutical company in collusion with government officials.)
Burroughs Wellcome is the pharmaceutical company mentioned in this report and it has since been acquired by GlaxoSmithKline.
In the half-hour broadcast Prime Time's Katie Hannon revealed details of how children from mother and baby homes were used as test subjects by pharmaceutical companies who were trialing new vaccines in the 1960s into the 1970s. This testing was done on babies without the mothers' consent. These were vulnerable women and researchers and government officials knew it. I transcribed most of the broadcast below.
The records on these experiments are hidden away from the public. Even the people who were the test subjects can't access them. These babies were injected with experimental three in one and five in one vaccines. How many injections did they receive? Were there adverse events following the vaccinations? No one knows.
What does this say about the ethics of the vaccine industry?
Vaccine makers in the U.S. can't be sued for adverse reactions to their vaccines. It seems the drug industry enjoys blanket protection globally when it comes to the issue of vaccinations.
For those who would say that what was done in Ireland is an acceptable practice because the end was the production of a vaccine to fight disease, I would ask how they would feel about an experimental vaccine being tested on their children—without their knowledge or permission.
In the last segment we hear that the babies of these poor institutionalized women who died were sent to medical schools for dissection. This happened to hundreds of babies, again without the mother's knowledge or permission. And how many of these dead babies were also part of the vaccine trials?
Prime Time introduced the broadcast by saying,
“And most shocking of all, we’ll reveal for the first time how hundreds of [Irish] children were used for medical science, even in death.”
“All the women in there, they had no power.”
Prime Time’s Katie Hannon: “Their powerlessness left their babies uniquely vulnerable.”
“We were there for them to do whatever they wanted. We were the lowest of the lowest.”
--
Anne Dachel is Media Editor of Age of Autism.
Posted by Age of Autism at November 07, 2011 at 5:57 AM in Anne Dachel , Vaccine Safety Permalink