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4

Building the Case

By early 1974, we had well organised, informal arrangements covering nearly 300 families with a number of dedicated parents helping to keep the campaign alive in their areas. Local meetings were organised, the press was kept informed and Members of Parliament were approached for their support. Among some of the activities organised to publicise the campaign was the printing of a car sticker which read ‘VACCINE DAMAGED CHILDREN NEED JUSTICE’ and this appeared on cars all over the country.

Eight months previously I had been sitting wondering if I could manage to carry the workload I knew would be involved in the campaign I wanted to start. Now there were numerous families ready to help and a widespread organisation to rely on. Helen was twelve and healthy apart from her convulsions. I had a supportive family and was beginning also to make contact with organisations that cared for disabled children and provided occasional holidays and some overnight care.

I could now devote time to raising the issues with the Government and for this the first essential was to ensure that the facts and figures to be presented were clear and unambiguous. With reports from nearly 300 families to bring together, a detailed analysis of the information was a first priority.

It is inevitable when stories of any particular illnesses or accidents – especially those affecting children – appear in the press, that large numbers of people will identify with the details given and say that is what happened to them. In order to be sure that I was presenting clear details of vaccine-damaged children, rather than a collection of details of disabled children, I designed a simple questionnaire form which parents were asked to fill in. This asked for the child’s name and date of birth, the date and type of vaccination, details of the reaction which followed vaccination and a note of the interval between vaccination and reaction. Parents were also asked to say if they had reported the reaction to their clinic or doctor and what the response was to any such report. I was not qualified to determine the child’s state of health prior to the vaccination, but I knew that when the questionnaires came to be examined, as I was confident they would be, the necessary medical histories would be sought by examining specialists.

This specific detail is vital for anyone making a claim about vaccine damage today. A surprising number of claimants seem to think that all that is required is a letter or telephone call to the Vaccine Damage Payment Unit, which was set up in 1978 to check claims, saying that they or their children were vaccine damaged and thinking that the Payment Unit will do the rest. Any claim needs as much supporting evidence as possible and the claimant is the best person to look for it and send it on for checking.

When I met Professor Stewart during my trip to Glasgow in 1976, he looked at the questionnaires and considered that they would give a satisfactory first history. When he was later a member of the team which examined cases for the Department of Health, he extended the questionnaire to include additional medical details, but I was pleased to note that the basics of my simple questionnaire remained a constant part of future medical studies.

One thing which became immediately obvious from the questionnaires was that three out of every four families blamed the triple vaccination – the combined diphtheria, tetanus and whooping cough vaccines. There had not been any adverse publicity about either of the first two components and the blame for the damage was laid at the door of the whooping cough vaccine which had been the subject of criticism from time to time. Having started off with the knowledge only of the effects of polio vaccination, it was necessary to investigate whooping cough vaccine as a possible cause of most of the cases of damage on my files.

It was at about this time that I read of the research by Dr John Wilson, Consultant Neurologist at Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children. Dr Wilson had examined the case histories of a number of children suffering severe illnesses within 24 hours of vaccination and published a report on the subject.

Following my initial contact with Professor Stewart and now having a bit more confidence in talking about vaccine damage, I decided to phone Dr Wilson to talk about the details I had collected. It isn’t easy for laymen to venture into highly professional expert areas and, until I had met Dr Wilson, I wasn’t sure what my reception would be. I needn’t have worried. Dr Wilson agreed to meet me at Great Ormond Street Hospital. He was pleasant and helpful and took time out from his busy day to look at my file. He told me which of the cases could be considered as ‘probable’ and which were ‘possible’ and by the time I left him I knew a great deal more about how to sort out all the details sent to me by parents.

Before I left he said,‘You have to be aware that you will probably be criticised by some of my medical colleagues for what they will see as raising doubts about vaccination.’ I couldn’t help but wonder if he had suffered criticism following his report.

Following Dr Wilson’s advice on possible and probable cases, I then divided the families and their letters into two groups, one to which I could offer membership of the Association as being probable cases. The other group I could only offer to ensure that, when the time came, their details would be passed on to the Government. I did this knowing there would be critics who would say that this was just a scare campaign, without any basis for claiming damage, and I had to ensure that the details would stand up to scrutiny. Indeed, it was not long before the Chairman of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation which advises the Government and promotes vaccination publicly said my files were ‘just a collection of cases seeking compensation for disabled children’.

Dr Wilson’s help at the time was invaluable and gave me the confidence I needed to present my case, based on all the details I had collected.

Over the years, Dr Wilson continued to be a source of help and advice to the Association, accompanying us to meetings where medical matters were likely to be discussed. For example, he helped with the evidence to the Royal Commission on Civil Liability and Compensation for Personal Injury (the Pearson Commission) which recommended ‘strict liability’ for vaccine damage and he accompanied us to meetings with the Department of Health when they wanted to tell us about their programme of MMR vaccination. Without the help, support and dedication of professionals and experts like Dr Wilson, our campaign might never have got off the ground, and would certainly have floundered when others sought to discredit us.