http://www.reutershealth.com/archive/2002/01/07/eline/links/20020107elin021.html
Families seek compensation for alleged vaccine harm
LONDON, Jan 07 (Reuters Health) - More than 1,000 British
families have joined a legal battle for millions of pounds compensation for
harm they claim was caused to their children by measles, mumps and rubella
(MMR) vaccines, their solicitors said on Monday.
The case--which is scheduled to come to trial in February 2003--follows
controversial research findings suggesting that use of the vaccines could be
linked to inflammatory bowel disease and autism.
Two firms of solicitors, Alexander Harris and Freethcartwright, have been
appointed as the joint leading firms in the generic litigation against Aventis
Pasteur MSD, GlaxoSmithKline and Merck.
A spokeswoman at Alexander Harris said that the firm represented about 1,000
families while the total number involved was probably around 1,500. She said
likely levels of compensation varied but could be worth several million pounds
for children with serious brain damage.
The firm's Web site says that the case is being brought under the Consumer
Protection Act--part of the European Union's Product Liability Directive that
imposes liability on manufacturers of products for any injury caused by an
unsafe product. The families had been granted public funds to pay for the legal
action.
The firm said that the UK Department of Health stopped using SmithKline
Beecham's Pluserix and Aventis Pasteur MSD's Immaravax in 1992, two years after
a similar vaccine containing the Urabe strain of mumps vaccine virus was withdrawn
in Canada after reports of meningitis.
"After we had been contacted by several hundred families a clear
pattern began to emerge," the solicitors said. "Children who were
developing well, both physically and intellectually, before the vaccine, regressed
after vaccination, often accompanied by other symptoms and a gradual decline
into autism."
They added: "It is important to stress
that we appear to be dealing with cases where the children, who were fit and
well before being vaccinated and were developing normally in every way, are now
chronically ill and as a result many are seriously mentally or physically
disabled."
A spokesman for GlaxoSmithKline said that all the manufacturers were still
trying to clarify exactly what was being alleged by the families. He added that
numerous studies had failed to show a link between MMR vaccination and autism,
and that the legal action would be defended.
The Department of Health and the Medical Research Council have also
dismissed reports by researchers at London's Royal Free Hospital suggesting
that the triple vaccine may trigger autism.
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