Retired professor challenges order to child abuse inquiry

Prof Irene Hillary, a retired professor of microbiology, has been treated "shabbily, if not shamefully" arising from the Government's decision to direct a division of the child abuse commission to inquire into the conduct of vaccination trials on infants in institutions run by religious orders, it was claimed in the the High Court yesterday.

Mr Donal O'Donnell SC was opening Prof Hillary's action aimed at quashing a Government order directing the vaccine trials division of the commission to inquire into the conduct of the vaccination trials, which were carried out on dates in 1960, 1971 and 1973. The inquiry is on hold pending the outcome of the challenge.

A trial in 1960-61 was carried out on 58 infants in five mother and baby homes and its results were written up in the British Medical Journal and the Lancet, the court heard.

Prof Hillary, who retired from the virus reference laboratory in 1993, had rendered considerable service in the field of science and had a hard-won and well-deserved international reputation, counsel said.

In an affidavit, Prof Hillary expressed concern about the implications for her professional reputation of the establishment of an inquiry into the vaccination trials under the aegis of a commission set up to inquire into the very serious issue of child abuse.

Mr O'Donnell argued the Government had no power to make the order in question and that no-one appeared to have experienced injury or harm as a result of the trials, "let alone abused". There were then no General Medical Council ethical guidelines in existence and it was accepted by all that the trials were conducted in accordance with accepted norms of the time, "if not of a higher standard", he said.

The decision to direct the investigation into the conduct of the trials arose from "lurid and uninformed media comment" about the trials in 1991, counsel said. The media had revisited the matter in 1997 and the then Minister for Health had pledged an inquiry. The chief medical officer (CMO) carried out an inquiry into the ethical propriety of the conduct of the trials and produced a report. There was no mention in the CMO's report of the words "harm" or, more particularly, that much more loaded and emotive term, "abuse", let alone "child abuse", counsel said. The report was given to the Minister for Health.

This particular train had been moving slowly from 1991, but in the late 1990s there was an intersection of a different issue, he said. There was considerable and urgent public concern about child abuse in institutions run by religious orders under the supervision of the State. This prompted the government in 2000 to establish the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse.

As the child abuse train was passing on the tracks, the issue of vaccination trials was "hitched up" to it by a government order, purportedly made under the provisions of the Child Abuse Act 2000, Mr O'Donnell said. It was his case there was no power to make such an order.

Retired Prof Patrick Meenan, who was head of the department of microbiology and applied science in UCD at the time of the trials and Prof Hillary's superior, had challenged directions issued by the commission requiring him to appear before it and give evidence on oath.

The Supreme Court had upheld that challenge last year and had also made remarks about the validity of the establishment of the vaccines inquiry.

Immediately after that Supreme Court decision, Prof Hillary's solicitors had written in August 2003 seeking to discuss the implications of what the court had said, but had received no substantive response from either the State or the commission, Mr O'Donnell said. She had then reluctantly initiated this legal action.

The State pleads the Government is empowered under the Child Abuse Act 2000, where it thinks "appropriate", to confer on the commission "additional functions or powers" which must be "connected with" the functions and powers of the commission. They say the disputed order empowers the commission to inquire into three vaccine trials referred to in the report of the CMO and any other trials during the relevant period and to publish a report on its inquiry.

The case continues today.