Terry Prone: Memory of late Thalidomide victim Jacqui Browne should be honoured

Having warned that the Government was waiting for Thalidomide victims to die, Jacqui Browne's death is a reproach to the system

Kerry woman, yachtswoman, and disability rights campaigner Jacqueline Anne (Jacqui) Browne on board the Cork yacht in the Clipper Round the World Yacht Race in 2010. Jacqui died last Monday. Irish Examiner Archive Picture: Denis Minihane

Just under a year ago, Jacqui Browne stated her grim certainty. That certainty was that the Government was simply waiting for Irish Thalidomide survivors to die. 

This week she died, her death not probative of such an intent, but a reproach to the system, nonetheless.

She held that certainty even though, this time last year, the Government was indicating that it would take a new approach to solving the problems caused by doctors prescribing a morning sickness drug to pregnant women, those doctors unaware that it would cause grievous damage to their unborn babies. Long after that drug had been removed from sale in other countries, it lurked on the shelves of pharmacies here, ready to maim and disfigure.

Jacqui Browne, front, with other members of the Irish Thalidomide Association arriving at Government Buildings in 2022 for one of many meetings where they sought long-overdue justice for survivors of the Thalidomide drug. File picture: Sam Boal/Rolling News

Kerry woman Jacqui Browne was one of the babies born disastrously damaged by Thalidomide.

Her hands and forearms were shortened. Her hearing less than normal. Her speech impaired. When most toddlers are learning to play and explore, Jacqui was being poked and tested, torn from her family for special education in a school for deaf children in Dublin.

The first of 35 major surgical operations was done to the little girl when she was a tiny five-year-old. Big surgical interventions continued throughout her life. And yet, she forged a career for herself, internationally, as a disability equality consultant.

Intrepid yachtswoman 

She had a life; becoming a yachtswoman who survived a shipwreck near Java. 

The Cork Clipper — with Jacqui Browne among the crew — leading the fleet out of port at the start of Race 3 from Rio to Cape Town in the 2010 Clipper Round the World Race. File picture: Clipper Ventures/PA

One of a group competing in the Clipper Round the World Yacht Race 15 years ago, when their boat went aground, she and the rest of the crew managed to get to a place where they could survive until rescue boats came.

Despite the never-ending problems caused to her life by Thalidomide and the corrective surgeries that never seemed to be complete, she was a self-confessed optimist.

“I’m always happy,” she confirmed. “I have wonderful friends and great family support. But I do find physically there is so much I can’t do.”

Along with the other 40 survivors (together with some people who the Thalidomide Association believe to justify adding to that number), she went public in recent years to ask the powers that be to apologise to the mothers who have blamed themselves all their lives for the hurt to their children caused by the “miracle” drug.

What emerged last year aggravated, rather than assuaged, the anger of the survivors. It was an expression of sympathy rather than a straight-up apology. In its aftermath, another mother died.

The Thalidomide survivors, Jacqui front and centre among them, have for years asked the State to revisit the issue, pointing out that, just as polio victims suffer post-polio syndrome decades after they thought they were done with the sequelae of the infection, victims of Thalidomide enter new levels of suffering as they enter old age — for different reasons.

“When you have impairments due to the thalidomide drug, you’re all the time compensating,” Jacqui pointed out. 

You’re doing things maybe differently to how somebody else might do them, but you’re actually overusing one side of your body. So that too becomes inflamed and sore and painful because you can’t use the other side. 

Paying tribute to Jacqui, Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission chief Liam Herrick talked of mourning the loss of a “colleague, advisor, and friend”.

Her Thalidomide Association colleagues — 39 of them now left to continue the fight they shouldn’t still be fighting — talk of losing a warrior.

Her family will experience the loss differently: They grieve a family member, a beloved sister.

The Taoiseach and Tánaiste — each of whom has at various times expressed understanding of the issue and a wish to solve the remaining problems — might honour the memory of Jacqui Browne by kicking life into an administrative process that’s almost one sadly unproductive year in business this month.