Retired professor challenges vaccination trials inquiry

A Government-ordered inquiry into the conduct in the 1960s of vaccination trials on children in institutions run by religious orders is now expected to be put on hold pending the outcome of a High Court challenge to the inquiry initiated yesterday by retired UCD Professor Irene Hillery.

The inquiry is being conducted by the Vaccine Trials Division of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse and Prof Hillery, a former Professor of Microbiology who retired from the Virus Reference Laboratory in 1993, is querying whether the commission has power to inquire into such matters.

Mr Justice O'Sullivan yesterday granted leave to Mr Donal O'Donnell SC, for Professor Hillery, to seek, in judicial review proceedings, a declaration that Statutory Instrument 280/2001, under which the Government gave additional functions to the commission to inquire into the conduct of the vaccine trials, is ultra vires (in excess of) the provisions of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse Act 2000.

The vaccine trials inquiry was established after some concerns were raised as to the ethical propriety of the trials. No allegations of wrongdoing have been made and no person has made a complaint of personal injury as a result of the trials.

The commission says the vaccination trials were, in general terms, conducted by retired Professor Patrick Meenan, now aged 86, and by then Dr Hillery, both attached to UCD, in 1960 and 1961 in five mother and baby homes and one children's institution, all run by religious orders. Prof Meenan was then head of the Department of Microbiology and Applied Medicine at UCD.

Yesterday, Mr O'Donnell said his client was a distinguished professor and author of three studies concerning the vaccine trials. Her first study, carried out in 1960, was published in the British Medical Journal. The trials were carried out in order to see whether it would be appropriate or beneficial to have a four in one vaccine. There was no claim the trials were illegal, unethical or improperly conducted.

In a situation where there were no allegations of wrongdoing regarding the trials but where the vaccine trials division was under the aegis of a commission established to inquire into child abuse, it should be determined whether the proposed vaccine trials inquiry was an appropriate method of resolving issues regarding those trials. The Supreme Court, in a decision of July 31st last, had expressed concern about juxtaposing a vaccine trials inquiry with a child abuse commission and there was a serious legal issue in that regard.

Counsel told the judge the commission appeared to have indicated, in recent correspondence with lawyers acting for Dr Hillery, that it would stay the vaccine trials inquiry should Prof Hillery pursue legal action.

Mr O'Donnell said the immediate precursors to his client's action was a Supreme Court decision of July 31st last. In that case, the Supreme Court quashed a High Court order directing Prof Meenan to give evidence to the vaccine trials inquiry and the court raised serious concerns about the validity of the establishment of the vaccines inquiry division and the procedures under which the division proposed to proceed. In light of those concerns, his side wrote to the commission on August 1st raising a number of matters and seeking for those to be addressed.

On August 5th, the commission indicated it could not itself address the issue of whether it had the power to conduct a vaccine trials inquiry.