Vaccine trials - Openness is required to do justice

The urgent need for greater openness and accountability in the murky world of vaccine trials is borne out by today’s front page report showing the public was kept in the dark about a previously unknown trial carried out on Irish children during the 1960s.

That this trial has come to light underlines the importance of ongoing research in the controversial area of medical experiments on children. It also highlights the significance of, and the need for investigative journalism because pharmaceutical companies only come clean when confronted with the past.

Invariably, parents were not told their children were effectively being used as “human guinea pigs”. And, as seen in the controversy surrounding Church-run mother-and-baby homes, children are never informed about drug trials they were subjected to as babies or tiny toddlers.