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Part 5: The Whistle-blower
[Transcript] Dr Alistair Torres who was from the Scottish dept of health,
and Dr Torres had been seconded onto the JCVI, effectively from Canada, and
he had been brought in, at least in part, to advise on the introduction of
MMR vaccine. The experience in Canada was that they introduced a vaccine
which contained a mumps component made up of a strain of the vaccine called
Urabe, which was originally generated in Japan and they had run into
problems with this vaccine. It produced meningitis in children (1:43). the
mumps virus was identified in the brain of the children and the vaccine was
pulled in Canada, it was pulled, it was stopped in 1997 (1:53), nonetheless
this was the vaccine that was intended to be introduced into the UK a year
later in 1988.
They changed the name, but the vaccine was identical, so it had gone from
Trivirix to Pluserix in the UK, an identical vaccine that had already been
withdrawn for safety reasons, in Canada.
Now Torres advised the JCVI not to introduce this vaccine because it was not
safe. He was overruled. He said if you are going to introduce it then you
should have active surveillance. That is doctors or people going out and
asking doctors--have you seen and cases of the following in the past month,
not waiting for doctors to spontaneously report. Spontaneous reporting
picks up 1-2% of those adverse reactions.....It is totally inadequate but
they were totally overruled, not active surveillance (3:02). So they were
going to intro a vaccine that has been withdrawn in other countries, known
to be unsafe and they were going to have no active surveillance (3:08) for
possible adverse events in this country. Now this was done, he said, for
competitive pricing reasons. The strain of the vaccine that contained the
dangerous mumps component was approx. 1/4 the price of the American MMRII
made by Merck. There had been no reports of meningitis using the Merck
vaccine which contained a strain of mumps called Jeryl Lynn....So what we
had was a cheaper vaccine that was known to be dangerous (3:47), so when the
vaccines were licensed or the proposal to licence these vaccines, the JCVI
or members of that committee (4:0) went to SmithKline Beecham (SKB) and said
we want your vaccine. SKB said we are not happy about it because this has
already been withdrawn in Canada, it has got this mumps component in it
which is dodgy
They said if we are going to do it then we want an indemnity, we want
indemnity from prosecution for damage to children on the basis (4:27) of the
receipt of the vaccine, and it appears that indemnity was granted, and
Torres told us about this (4:33), and he said at the meeting, the girl there
from SKB said we are immunising the children and the government is
immunising us.
So the vaccine was produced, licensed, given, and cases of meningitis
started to appear. they were recorded and documented in the minutes of the
JCVI which are now available on line and have been obtained by us as part of
our investigation. More and more cases began to be reported, the Scottish
dept' withdrew this vax, certain health areas rejected the Urabe containing
vaccine but still the JCVI continued with it. There was no withdrawal of
this vaccine until finally a study was grudgingly done in Nottingham where
they found a much higher risk of meningitis with this vaccine (5:33) than
had previously been predicted by passive surveillance, and the vaccine was
withdrawn overnight, and it was only withdrawn overnight because it was
leaked to the press.
It appeared in a newspaper and suddenly the vaccine was pulled. So a
dangerous vaccine, a knowingly dangerous vaccine was introduced and
ultimately proven to be dangerous and had to be withdrawn (6:00) in 1992.
Part 6 Government liability
[Transcript] The two of the three vaccine brands that were introduced in
1988 had to be withdrawn for safety reasons and yet Dr Salisbury in his
statement to the GMC sums up by saying this is a vaccine with an exemplary
safety record. Well, if that is his idea of an excellent safety record then
we have a very different perception he and I of vaccine safety. And so we
come full circle now because it turns out the Dean was right. Ari Zuckerman
was right. Based upon the information he got, he says (probably from Dr
Salisbury way back when these parents started coming to us in 1996/7), that
it was the government that was going to be sued.
I thought it was going to be the drug companies, but it wasn't. Why was it
the government? Because the government had given the drug companies an
indemnity against harm and so this is why we are here, this is what this is
all about (1:19), this is what this whole GMC affair and effort to descredit
doctors questioning the safety of the MMR vaccine has come about because of
an indemnity given to the drug companies all those years ago for the
introduction of an unsafe vaccine by perhaps just a few members of the
department of Health or recommended by the Dept of Health to the Government
such that a vaccine (1:53) was introduced and when you ask now, and people
have asked, was there an indemnity? is there an indemnity? the answer is
catagorically, from David Salisbury, time and time again, there was no
indemnity (2:07), no letter of comfort, nothing at all....and yet in the
minutes of the JCVI, as late on in this story as 1997, there is an entry
there that says (it talks about the various brands of vaccine that are
available) SKB continued to sell the Urabe strain without liablity (2:39),
there it is, in black and white in their own document.
I have been every which way around that statement and cannot reconcile it to
anything else other than that there was and remains an indemnity, so I am
afraid (3:00) that this is really the origins of this whole process and the
hope that my colleagues and I be discredited before this information ever
becomes public, and in an effort to protect that original decision, that
original flawed decision and the consequences that have flowed from it, then
we find ourselves in this position, and that is fine but it is not going to
stop the truth coming out, and you would think under those circumstances
having withdrawn this vaccine (3:37) in Australia, Canada and Japan, and the
UK that that would be it, they would get rid of it, because it is not safe,
but no (3:46) they go on making it, and what do they do with it, they ship
it out to the third world, and there was a mass vaccine campaign in Brazil
in the 90's where they gave the great majority of Brazilian children a
revaccination with MMR, during a very short space of time, with the Urabe
containing vaccine, which they knew to be dangerous, which produced an
epidemic of meningitis (4:16), a huge peak in the numbers of cases, and
there was a paper written about it after, and one of the points in the
discussion in the paper was perhaps it was not a good idea, in effect, to do
mass vaccination campaigns because it produced the true incidence of side
effects to a vaccine.
Well, who wrote that, who in God's name wrote that? So this is, if you
like, the morality of the people we are dealing with. Why is that vax even
on the shelf? Why is it being sold at cut rate price to third world
countries? What is the thinking behind this? Because it is certainly not a
moral imperative, it must be a commercial one. So that's why we are here
and that is why we will remain here, and continue to fight this (5:12) kind
of thing, because you can't treat people as expendable. You can't damage
them and put them to one side. Adolph Hitler in Mein Kampf once wrote the
greater truth excludes the lesser truth. In the world or mind of people
like Adolph Hitler and that kind of thinking failed in the 1940s and it is
going to fail now. You cannot treat people in a civilised society as
expendable.
Yes, there may be an argument for a vaccine programme that protects the
greater good but that does not mean that you can render those who are
damaged, just consign them to the dustcart because they are an
inconvenience, or their (6:08) mere presence undermines public confidence,
better to keep them hidden out the way and there are too many of these
children now, they won't be hidden away, and parents are getting very very
angry, and they have every right to be angry, and the truth is going to come
out, and it is going to be a very very painful truth when it does come out.
The tragedy is, it is going to damage public confidence in vaccine policy
across the board because people are going to say we don't believe you any
more, we don't trust you, you lied to us and when that happens all
vaccination policy is compromised, the whole pillar of public health comes
tumbling down and a lot of trouble is going to ensue as you are going to
deal with a population who are not protected from these infections and we
are going to run into big problems, and that responsibility for that lays at
the door of the public health figures and their commercial partners who have
allowed this to happen.