Orphans experimented on without consent. Selected human guinea pigs.
| Cruel Doctors Abuse their Position of Trust
Orphans used in cruel vaccine research experiments Broadmeadows Babies' Home, an unimpressive rambling collection of brick and weatherboard buildings about 20 kilometres north of Melbourne, was an unlikely setting for cruel medical experiments, but it was there in September 1947 that researchers from the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research started work to try to find a vaccination against herpes simplex. Every healthy child in permanent residence between seven and 10 months of age was selected as a human guinea pig. At first 16 babies were injected with an adult dose (one millilitre) of undiluted herpes virus. This was repeated in nine of the children two months later. Before each dose of herpes, the babies were given a preliminary injection of the vaccine, to see whether it would stop the spread of the herpes. Seven of the children showed an adverse reaction after the second preliminary injection and did not receive a full follow-up dose. The origins of the experiment - funded with a National Health and Medical Research Council grant - can be found in The Medical Journal of Australia of 5 March 1949, where the researchers published the results of an earlier herpes in children'' study at the home. Fifty-one of the 240 babies at the home were used between March 1946 and February 1947. Broadmeadows Babies' Home, opened in 1890 and run by the Roman Catholic Sisters of St Joseph, housed orphans and wards of state until they were about five years old, when they were sent to other Catholic institutions throughout Victoria. It closed in 1975. For scientists it offered an opportunity to observe the spread of the virus. Blood was repeatedly obtained by puncturing the babies' ear lobes, and cotton swabs were used to collect samples from mouth ulcers. The researchers hoped it might be possible to vaccinate other children against herpes in their first year of life. But their hopes were short-lived. According to their results, published in the Australian Journal of Experimental Biology and Medical Science in 1950, blood taken from the babies over two years showed the dead herpes virus failed to provide protection. All of the 10 vaccinated children (six babies left the home before the end of the experiment) caught herpes. Of the 10 remaining healthy children in the control group who were not vaccinated, only eight caught herpes from the infected children. This result speaks clearly against the efficacy of vaccination,'' the researchers' report said. The vaccination was of no benefit in preventing primary herpetic infection.'' Trial vaccines failed to pass animal safety test The subsequent medical experiments conducted on the unsuspecting children in orphanages and babies' homes in Victoria continued until 1970, and included trials of new vaccines that did not work or failed to pass safety tests in animals. Some experiments included giving children a test vaccine against whooping cough which was never put into production. An investigation by the Melbourne Age newspaper revealed that hundreds of children in orphanages and babies' homes, including wards of state, were used in the experiments and studies over 25 years. They were used to test vaccines and antigens for toxic effects before the new products were used on children in the wider community. In most of the experiments babies developed adverse reactions, including vomiting and abscesses. Those carrying out the experiments also included researchers from the Commonwealth Serum Laboratories. Four of the church-run or independent institutions where experiments and tests took place have been identified, but others remain unidentified. In the largest experiment, which was still running in 1970, 350 infants between the ages of three months and 36 months in unnamed institutions were injected with full adult doses of trial influenza vaccines to test for toxic reactions. Trepidation as search for vaccine begins Some researchers from the Commonwealth Serum Laboratories admitted at the time that they approached the test, which involved injecting infants in institutions with large doses of experimentally prepared flu vaccine, with some trepidation'' because influenza vaccines had long been known to produce more severe toxic reactions in children than in adults''. Two previous tests of influenza vaccines on children produced severe toxic reactions, including anorexia, nausea, vomiting and fever. The results of the tests were never published. Production of a whooping cough vaccine used by the CSL on groups in babies' homes was halted only after it failed to pass a safety test in animals. Commonwealth Serum Laboratories researchers had taken the commercially available vaccine and mixed it with a detergent, sodium desoxycholate, to try to make it less toxic! Over three years from 1967, they selected more than 350 motherless infants aged between three months and three years and injected them with doses of the trial vaccine. In a paper on the tests presented to the International Symposium on Influenza Vaccines for Men and Horses in London in 1972, published the following year, the researchers said they were aware of two earlier unreported investigations in Victoria. The investigations caused a wide range of toxic reactions. The Age newspaper believes these tests occurred about 1961 and 1965. In view of the distress and danger to which our infant subjects were exposed, no attempt was made to repeat these earlier studies,'' the 1972 report says. Instead, each vaccine was given in increments to small groups until the then current level recommended for adults was reached.'' One group of 58 infants was given smaller doses, with six injected twice with the largest dose of trial vaccine. A second group of 92 was injected with smaller doses, with 10 going on to receive full adult doses. The researchers reported that two of the children had high temperatures after the first large dose, but attributed it to stomach disorders''. They gave the children a second large dose a month later with no subsequent rise in temperatures. A trial vaccine based on a different strain of flu virus was given to a third group of 103 infants in 1968 and 1969. Twenty of the infants went on to receive full adult doses given in two injections. One of the infants developed a fever that lasted 12 hours. In 1970 a further 100 infants received an adult dose in two injections of a vaccine based on two other types of flu virus and their reactions and temperatures monitored. The researchers concluded, in the absence of any long-term tests, that the vaccines mixed with the detergent desoxycholate could be safely given to infants. Present doses of flu vaccines for children recommended by the National Health and Medical Research Council are two injections four weeks apart of .125 millilitres - or a quarter of an adult dose - for children between three months and two years. The recommended dose for children between two to six is two injections four weeks apart of .25 of a millilitre. Orphans experimented on without consent It is unclear in the experiments and studies uncovered by The Age who gave consent for the use of the infants. CSL's company secretary, Mr Peter Toohy, said in a statement to The Age: CSL Limited, an independent public company, could not comment on clinical trial protocols of the era when the then laboratories were an arm of the Commonwealth Department of Health.'' The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research admitted it had conducted tests with a killed herpes simplex vaccine on 16 children at the St Joseph's Foundling Hospital, which was also known as the Broadmeadows Babies' Home, and that the experimental vaccine failed to protect the children against the virus. These studies were carried out with the cooperation of the sisters in charge of the orphanage,'' the institute's spokesman, Dr David Vaux, claimed. If similiar studies were to be carried out today, the experimental protocols would have to be approved by a human ethics committee and informed consent would have to be obtained by the individuals involved or their guardians.'' Dr Vaux said he could only assume that consent to use the babies came from the Roman Catholic order that ran the orphanage, the Sisters of St Joseph. Sister Colleen O'Dwyer, the order's province leader, claimed she was unaware of any form of medical experimentation'' having taken place. |
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WELCOME TO CLAN Care Leavers of Australia Network Care Leavers Australia Network (CLAN) is a support and advocacy group for people brought up in care away from their family as state wards or Home children raised in Children's Homes, orphanages or other institutions, or in foster care. CLAN is also for anyone who has a close family member who was placed in care.
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