Vaccine trials ‘must be part of inquiry’

Campaigners have called for vaccine trials to be included in the upcoming mother and baby home inquiry, after it emerged a previously unknown fifth trial was carried out on children here in the 1960s.

The trial, revealed in yesterday’s Irish Examiner, was carried out in 1965 on 34 children.

Uncovered by Michael Dwyer of UCC’s School of History in an article in The Lancet in August of 1965, the measles trial was carried out by Irene Hillary and Patrick Meenan of UCD’s microbiology department and AJ Beale of Glaxo Laboratories.