Newspapers do not - and should not - set themselves up as scientific journals reporting the results of clinical trials of medicinal products or of statistically rigorous examinations of disease patterns in the community. At best they can pass on to their readers, by way of warnings or simple information, the results of research reported in those professional journals in which due scientific rigour in observed. Sometimes, they can catch straws in the public wind which may alert trained scientists to undertake the kinds of research which might establish such facts as may lie behind the public rumours. More often, however, the public press and other media will detect the wind of what may turn out to create a public or political controversy.
One such public controversy, which has waxed and waned in Ireland for nearly four decades, concerns the safety and efficacy of various vaccines designed to protect young children from whooping cough. Following some far from scientific articles published over the weekend by the Irish Independent, it seems likely that this controversy is about to be revived on at least two counts. The first has to do with whether or not the vaccine can or did cause permanent brain damage in those who received it as infants - an issue that was thrashed out in this State during the late 1970s and early 1980s when, it seems likely, an unusually toxic or defective batch of vaccine was issued and administered here.
The second issue likely to arise controversially now has to do with whether a vaccine designed to prevent a potentially lethal illness in young children should ever be tested on young orphaned children whose parents can have no say in whether it is administered or not. This controversy has recently raged in Australia and mention of such testing in two orphanages in Dublin in the early 1960s and the early 1970s (the first of them reported in the British Medical Journal) will likely fuel further public debate here. It is worth noting, however, that 30 and 40 years ago such tests happened virtually without demur in most countries as one of the very few means of trying to assess the likely risk or benefit of all products designed to help young children.
The other, much more heart-rending, controversy (whether whooping cough vaccine can cause brain damage to otherwise healthy infants, or whether the brain damage might have been caused by factors having nothing to do with the vaccine) is much more difficult to resolve. It was gone into in significant detail nearly 20 years ago and subsequent to that, but it is probably fair to say that many of the parents actively involved around that time were unhappy with the attempts made to resolve the issues for them.
In this context, it is important to remind people that currently estimated risks attending the administration of whooping cough vaccine are for temporary complications (such as fever or even a convulsion) to occur in one in every 140,000 immunisations offered, with permanent damage occurring in only one individual in every 330,000. These are very much less than the damage and the death that can be caused by whooping cough itself when it attacks a young child. An epidemic of 170,000 cases of whooping cough may cause up to 50 deaths, even in so-called developed countries.