CORK, IRELAND, June 10 (RIA Novosti), Mark Hirst – There is fresh evidence to show that secret drug testing, carried out on thousands of orphans in Ireland, also took place in other British colonies, a senior research academic at Cork University’s School of History has told RIA Novosti.
Michael Dwyer has uncovered evidence that 2,051 children and babies across Ireland were subjected to secret vaccination trials by international drugs company Burroughs Wellcome, which later merged to become the multinational pharmaceutical firm, GlaxoSmithKline.
“It is quite likely that vaccine trials were carried out in countries with British imperial connections,” Dwyer told RIA Novosti. “I have come across some evidence to substantiate this, however, a more definitive answer would require some further research.”
Dwyer said his research was initially focused on three vaccine trials conducted by Burroughs Wellcome in the 1960s and 70s involving 298 children.
“GlaxoSmithKline definitively stated that only one other vaccine trial had been conducted by Burroughs Wellcome in Ireland, and that had occurred in the 1970s,” Dwyer told RIA Novosti. “This is clearly not the case.”
Dwyer gained access to tens of thousands of medical files maintained by doctors involved in the trials and was able to reveal that more than
2,000 children and babies had been subjected to the secret vaccinations in several children’s homes across Ireland.
“In relation to my research, the doctors involved saw fit to keep detailed records of the trials undertaken in the 1930s, the results of which were subsequently published in popular medical periodicals,” Dwyer told RIA Novosti.
Dwyer said the practice of testing drugs on children and infants in children’s homes had also taken place in the US.
“In the US, William Park and May Schroder were working in competition with Burroughs Wellcome to produce the first alum-toxoid prophylactic and they undertook experimental vaccine trials in eight children's residential institutions in New York, including the Home for Hebrew Infants, also known as the Hebrew Infant Asylum,” Dwyer told RIA Novosti.
Dwyer believes the evidence he has uncovered is a snapshot of a much wider, historic policy by the pharmaceutical companies of trailing their new drugs on vulnerable children.
RIA Novosti invited GlaxoSmithKline to respond to the research findings, but the company declined to respond.
