Читать книгу Helen's Story - Rosemary Fox - Страница 7

‘And ’twere a cheaper way Better it were a brother died at once Than that a sister, by redeeming him, Should die for ever.’

William Shakespeare,

Measure for Measure, Act II Scene iv

The full implications of this quotation first occurred to me as I sat with Professor Gordon Stewart at the Edinburgh Festival Production of Measure for Measure in l976. I was visiting him to talk about the few children who had been adversely affected by vaccine damage, taking part as they did in the mass vaccination programmes which had protected the majority from the threat of illness from infectious disease. For a few of those vaccinated, however, far from being a blessing, those vaccinations turned out to be a curse that would destroy their lives.

I had gone to Glasgow at Professor Stewart’s invitation to show him the details I had been collecting since 1974 about children who had suffered severe reactions to various vaccinations and were brain damaged as a result. Professor Stewart had been concerned about this issue for some time and was himself collecting similar data through his work as Professor of Immunology at Glasgow University.

Having seen a reference to Professor Stewart’s work in the national press, I decided to see if I could find his telephone number and ring him. I was a bit nervous about doing it as, at that stage, I had little – if any – contact with University Professors and was not quite sure how he would react to a phone call from an unknown mother asking him about his research.

‘I hope you don’t mind me phoning you like this,’ I started,‘but I saw your name in the Telegraph recently, along with a report about your work collecting details about vaccine damage. I’m running a campaign about this and wonder if I could ask you to look at some of the details I have collected?’

‘I would be very pleased to help,’ he said. ‘But first I would want to look at the details.’

He went on to say that he would soon be in my area, Warwickshire, on his way back to Glasgow from a holiday and that he would call in to see me.

True to his word, he called in with his wife, Nina, and we spent some time going through the letters I had received from parents who were convinced that their children’s disabilities had stemmed from vaccination. I realised that I need not have worried about contacting him. He was a kind, sympathetic man with an easy manner and was already aware from his own case files of the tragedy of vaccine damage. At the end of our chat, he and his wife kindly invited me to stay with them in Glasgow, where I spent some pleasant days finding out more about his work.

I went to Professor Stewart’s office at the University to look through some of his files and he introduced me to his secretary, Margaret, who was to prove immensely helpful in our ongoing work on the analysis of parents’ reports about their children. During my stay, I joined them at the Edinburgh Festival production and, among my records of that time, is the programme from the show which contains what I regarded as a very appropriate reference to vaccine damage:‘individual sacrifice for majority benefit’.

My contact with Professor Stewart was to remain constant for the next 20 years, during which time he carried out a major study into the reports given by parents of the damage to their children which they regarded as having resulted from vaccination. His work formed part of the 1977 studies set up by the Secretary of State for Social Services into reported reactions to whooping cough vaccination. For example, an advisory panel under the chairmanship of Professor Dudgeon, a member of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) was set up to examine 50 cases of serious reactions to vaccination given by me to the Committee on Safety of Medicines (CSM)

There was also an advisory panel chaired by Professor T W Meade of the Medical Research Council, which was asked to provide an expert analysis by epidemiological methods of the cases reported to the CSM.

Many of the reports had been handed to the CSM by me at their request and many others had been collected by Professor Stewart himself. Details of the study were published in Whooping Cough, a report issued by the Department of Health and Social Security in May 1981.

The report from Professor Dudgeon’s committee stated that, in some cases, the reaction was such that an association with immunization seemed possible. Professor Meade’s panel found that the cases were unsatisfactory for epidemiological purposes, because of inadequate methods for the systemic detection of events following the use of vaccines.‘This should not be taken as meaning that pertussis vaccine damage does not occur’ the report said.

Before 1974, there was very little discussion of vaccine damage. Although some health experts were concerned about the possibility of some children being damaged, it was a subject that was seldom mentioned publicly. The media generally followed the official line that the benefits of vaccination outweighed the disadvantages and that it would be highly irresponsible for anyone to publish anything which might turn parents away from vaccinations offered for the protection of their children’s health.

Some indication of how successful this concern was can be seen from the fact that although there was disquiet in medical circles about serious illnesses being caused by smallpox vaccination in the early l960s, and concern about a measles vaccine withdrawn in l968 following reports of damage and death following its use, very little of this information reached the public. There were some brief references in l968 to the fact that the whooping cough vaccine in use up until then had little effect on the disease but could be causing brain damage in a few children. Parents knew nothing of this, and continued to bring their children to clinics believing only that they were protecting them from whooping cough. Vaccine-damaged children had never been talked about and, to quote a doctor expressing some concern about them in l973, children who were damaged were ‘left to lie where they fall’.

It was in l973 that I began to question the morality of the State’s attitude, which allowed a few children to suffer the disadvantages of vaccination without offering any warning beforehand of possible risk, and with a seemingly casual acceptance by the Department of Health of the devastating consequences. I became aware of some of these background details having had Helen, my daughter, suffer a severe reaction to a polio vaccination in l962. She had been injected with a Salk vaccine – so called after the scientist who developed it – and I was then left to deal with the consequences. I had had a perfectly healthy, normal child in 1962; in 1973, at the age of 11, Helen was assessed as having a mental age of about three, and suffered constant convulsions and the upsets and illnesses associated with them. I was also told that she would never live a normal life and would need constant care.

I became determined to find out what action I could take which, while not making her better, might secure an acknowledgement of the debt which was owed to her and others in her position.

In September 1973, following some local publicity about Helen and another vaccine-damaged girl, parents with similar stories to tell made contact. A meeting with some of these parents was arranged, at which a decision was taken to set up the Association of Parents of Vaccine Damaged Children with the aims of ‘establishing the reality of vaccine damage’ and ‘investigating the role and responsibility of the Government in making provision for those who were damaged’.

The campaign which followed lasted 27 years.

Rosemary Fox, February 2006