Ruling due on aspirin brain damage case

The High Court in Britain was today giving its ruling on whether the British government was negligent in not issuing a speedier warning over a connection between aspirin and a neurological condition which left a child severely brain damaged.

Amanda Smith, who is now 22, was a healthy six-year-old until she contracted chickenpox in May 1986 and was given adult aspirin by her mother, Jenny.

A few days later, Amanda’s condition deteriorated into a severe neurological illness - Reye’s Syndrome.

Despite expert care at London’s Guy’s Hospital, she was left with brain damage, a form of spastic quadriplegia and epilepsy, and is not expected to live beyond the age of 40.

Amanda, of Crowborough, East Sussex, has launched a damages action through her mother against the Secretary of State for Health - on behalf of the Committee on Safety of Medicines - who denies negligence and liability.

Her counsel, Lord Brennan QC, told Mr Justice Morland in London that he would have to decide whether, between March and June 1986, the defendant owed a duty of care to warn that young children - in particular those with chickenpox - should not be given aspirin.

If such a duty was owed, there was a question over whether the defendant was in breach of it by failing to give a public warning until June 10, 1986.

It was his case that it should have been given either by April 10, which was two weeks after the CSM had determined that aspirin might be a contributory factor in causing the syndrome, or at least no later than mid-May.