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ALTHOUGH IT EVENTUALLY went on to offer a once-off ex-gratia payment of €10,000, the Irish Government was advised not to undertake liability for compensation to people who may have been damaged by the whooping cough vaccination.
An extract from a note written to the Taoiseach by the Secretary to the Government – and released this week under the 30-year-rule – advises the State to “let the ordinary law apply – as in the case of thalomide”.
He said any compensation offered would “open flood gates far wider than those opened by any scheme of compensation for criminal injuries or malicious damages – or anything else of a like nature. “Proving cause and effect in an area like this is next to impossible,” he reasoned.
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Two major decisions were taken less than a week later at Cabinet level – to offer an ex-gratia payment of £10,000 to fourteen people whose disabilities the Expert Medical Group on Whooping Cough Vaccination found could be attributed to the vaccine, on the condition that they waive any further claims and that arrangements should be made to “obtain an undertaking for persons accepting vaccination, in future, that they will not institute any action against the State or any public authority in respect of disability resulting or alleged to result from the vaccination”.
Earlier that month, the Expert Group advised to award compensation to the 14 people considered to be “vaccine damaged”.
The group found that there was “no conclusive evidence” that the vaccination caused the disability in any person” examined.
During its report, the group said paying compensation could make the public “apprehensive about the safety of other recommended vaccinations”.
A total of 93 people went before the committee between 1977 and 1984. Sixteen were offered the £10,000 payment, but 77 applications were declined.
This year, the incidence of whooping cough is on the rise again. As of 7 December, 444 cases of pertussis were reported to the HPSC – more than double the year before. The most affected age category was very young babies, many of whom were hospitalised.
See National Archives, References G. 18/53 and G. 18/60; 2012/90/530
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I’ll say it again – taxpayers did not damage anyone, these are the products of multinational companies. If they will take the profits then they can take the responsibility.
It is horrendous that the tax payer is dumped with unlimited compensations payments for the benefit of the legal profession who plunder “the state” when they have absolutely no liability whatsoever.
You can say it again all you like but that doesn’t add an iota of truth to your generic slur; vaccines save lives. They are usually discovered by researchers and mass produced my companies but that is utterly irrelevant – that expert group back in the 1980s found no credible evidence any of this disabilities were linked to the vaccine; as for your ‘legal’ argument, it suffers similar logical problems; the amount paid out was ‘go away’ money; 10,000 divided by 14 isn’t exactly a fortune but it’s cheaper than a legal wrangling and the unnecessary panic cases like this invoke. Also, Irish legal bodies are certainly not mncs so your implication of collusion and conspiracy makes no sense. In summation, the whooping cough vaccine was safe and continues to be. That spurious claims or misguided ones were made in an era before the advent of the advances in genetic testing and diagnostics we currently have isn’t hugely surprising. Conspiracy claims are tiring and irresponsible – think of the amount of kids who died over the scaeemongering about MMR…
Your superior summation fails to see my point. Vaccines absolutely do save lives, I give them myself. My argument is that the taxpayer should have absolutely no ethical or financial liability for the damage caused by a companies/corporations products, and yet it is decided by politicians and the legal system that the citizens must pay. This goes for infected blood products, thalidomide, army deafness claims, the meat tribunal, collapsed banks etc etc.
10,000 divided by 14 may not be much – but have you not heard of precedent?
Unless the state is prepared to underwrite the risk of vaccines going wrong, people will not take them. Then where will we be?
If we can save bondholders we can look after people.
Just wondering – if your child was damaged by a vaccine, that full information on the possible side effects of the said vaccine were NOT made available. What would you do? Would you say, oh well, my child has been sacrificed for the good of many and struggle along trying to do what is best, and scraping and scrunging by an inadequate lying health system? I know from experience – we have been out thousands, and it is ongoing with medical. It is life threatening. Funny that we never had to go to doctors, etc BEFORE the vaccine. Now it’s constant. So what should happen to the victims? yes I say Victims, as many are very young who had intentions of college, etc, and now may have that taken away. What would you say to them? Sorry, can’t help?
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