To Helen and our wonderful family David,
Suzanne and Rosanna
Heartfelt thanks to Jack Ashley, Lord Ashley of Stoke, without whom this project would not have developed as successfully as it did.
Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Acknowledgement
Foreword
Introduction
1 A Life Less Ordinary
2 Who Knew What?
3 The Association
4 Building the Case
5 Getting into Parliament
6 Going to Press
7 Castle’s Door Opens
8 Fault Findings
9 Royal Commission Responds
10 Losing the Way in Europe
11 Breakthrough
12 Making It Happen
13 Broken Promises
14 Marshalling the Law
15 Staying Power
16 Dissent into Chaos
17 The Final Lap
18 Deer Hunt
19 Battling for a Win
20 Settling Up
21 A Voice for the Forgotten Few
22 Cases Dismissed
23 The End of the Campaign
Vaccines – Making an Informed Choice
Reference Sources and Articles
Copyright
Foreword by Rt Hon Lord Ashley of Stoke, C.H.
Just imagine that in 1962 you have been blessed with a happy, healthy baby daughter and that overnight she is transformed into one who could never be normal and who suffers permanent mental handicap and convulsions. Then, as you sought explanations and challenged the Government’s refusal of compensation, you were warned that you were damaging the vaccine programme and told to keep quiet. How, in that deferential age, would any woman react?
Even in those unenlightened days, when women were expected to keep their place, Rosemary Fox refused to condone this lamentable ethos, defied convention and began a modest, reasonable but determined campaign for compensation. It eventually involved the Ombudsman, a Royal Commission, the European Commission on Human Rights, Parliament and the Prime Minister. According to the Secretary of State for Health, it was ‘one of the best examples I have experienced of a group of people with a cause that they know is right changing the course of events…. Their campaign was almost a perfect example of how a voluntary organisation should do its job.’ These comments, however, came after years of acrimonious exchanges with him in the House of Commons.
Despite the compliments at the end of the campaign, during it Rosemary had to endure bitter condemnation for arousing ‘unnecessary’ fears about the vaccination programme. Indeed, all who helped her were similarly attacked, notwithstanding the severe damage to some children, testified by doctors and eventually admitted by the Ministry of Health. Rosemary had to face procrastination at all levels of Government, as well as vituperative personal attacks. There were even attempts to take over her organisation and expel her.
The rollercoaster hazards of these efforts to seek justice are faithfully recorded in this meticulous account. It is an honest, disturbing but ultimately inspiring story which resulted in a complete reversal of Government policy – to the benefit of all vaccine damaged children.
Jack Ashley
‘And ’twere a cheaper way Better it were a brother died at once Than that a sister, by redeeming him, Should die for ever.’
William Shakespeare,
Measure for Measure, Act II Scene iv
The full implications of this quotation first occurred to me as I sat with Professor Gordon Stewart at the Edinburgh Festival Production of Measure for Measure in l976. I was visiting him to talk about the few children who had been adversely affected by vaccine damage, taking part as they did in the mass vaccination programmes which had protected the majority from the threat of illness from infectious disease. For a few of those vaccinated, however, far from being a blessing, those vaccinations turned out to be a curse that would destroy their lives.
I had gone to Glasgow at Professor Stewart’s invitation to show him the details I had been collecting since 1974 about children who had suffered severe reactions to various vaccinations and were brain damaged as a result. Professor Stewart had been concerned about this issue for some time and was himself collecting similar data through his work as Professor of Immunology at Glasgow University.
Having seen a reference to Professor Stewart’s work in the national press, I decided to see if I could find his telephone number and ring him. I was a bit nervous about doing it as, at that stage, I had little – if any – contact with University Professors and was not quite sure how he would react to a phone call from an unknown mother asking him about his research.
‘I hope you don’t mind me phoning you like this,’ I started,‘but I saw your name in the Telegraph recently, along with a report about your work collecting details about vaccine damage. I’m running a campaign about this and wonder if I could ask you to look at some of the details I have collected?’
‘I would be very pleased to help,’ he said. ‘But first I would want to look at the details.’
He went on to say that he would soon be in my area, Warwickshire, on his way back to Glasgow from a holiday and that he would call in to see me.
True to his word, he called in with his wife, Nina, and we spent some time going through the letters I had received from parents who were convinced that their children’s disabilities had stemmed from vaccination. I realised that I need not have worried about contacting him. He was a kind, sympathetic man with an easy manner and was already aware from his own case files of the tragedy of vaccine damage. At the end of our chat, he and his wife kindly invited me to stay with them in Glasgow, where I spent some pleasant days finding out more about his work.
I went to Professor Stewart’s office at the University to look through some of his files and he introduced me to his secretary, Margaret, who was to prove immensely helpful in our ongoing work on the analysis of parents’ reports about their children. During my stay, I joined them at the Edinburgh Festival production and, among my records of that time, is the programme from the show which contains what I regarded as a very appropriate reference to vaccine damage:‘individual sacrifice for majority benefit’.
My contact with Professor Stewart was to remain constant for the next 20 years, during which time he carried out a major study into the reports given by parents of the damage to their children which they regarded as having resulted from vaccination. His work formed part of the 1977 studies set up by the Secretary of State for Social Services into reported reactions to whooping cough vaccination. For example, an advisory panel under the chairmanship of Professor Dudgeon, a member of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) was set up