From the cradle to the grave

Perhaps it is an indication of the level of institutional child abuse in this country, that the churches, the state and the researchers could not imagine international law also extended to protect the interests of mere children in orphanages.

What is concerning however, is that even a quarter of a century after the last experiments were allegedly completed, and long after the negative effects of some of the vaccines were known, (such as Creutzfeldt Jacob Disease similar to mad cows from Human Pituitary Hormones, and cancer from Salk vaccine contaminated with the monkey virus SV-40), breaches of the Nuremberg Code still failed to illicit any response in the wider medical, government, and church circles of this country.

Speaking in the late 1990’s, Dr Norman Wettenhall - the only researcher personally involved in such experiments to make a public statement - said of his trials in the 1950’s, “it was not a mistake at the time, but only a mistake by today’s standards”.

He confirmed that he didn’t know who gave consent for babies to be used in his experiments: “You went to a babies’ home, and the nursing staff or the matron or someone expected you, so I didn’t query any more than that.”

Dr Wethenhall injected about 100 babies in at least four institutions with an experimental whooping cough vaccine that later failed safety tests in mice.

The Commonwealth Serum Laboratory he worked for at the time of the experiments refused to comment, stating that as they had been recently privatised, they were no longer an organ of the state.

The Head of Clinical Science at the Institute of Child Research in Perth stated that the claims of unethical experiments on vulnerable children “were far-fetched”. The President of the Australian Medical Association said that researchers were only trying to develop vaccines in the community in the way they saw medically appropriate.

Dr Michael Woolridge, then Federal Minister for Health, while ruling out a Federal inquiry at least expressed concern, stating “It shouldn’t have happened then, it couldn’t happen now”.

Astoundingly, the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute said that the orphanages and babies' homes had sought their help to prevent serious outbreaks of major diseases: “The intent was to improve the health and welfare of those who were most at risk - those living in close association in crowded environments such as schools and orphanages,” the Institute stated.

Even without the Nuremberg Code to inform the practice of research with experimental agents on human subjects, one has to seriously question the morality of unleashing experimental agents among children “most at risk”, who are “living in close association in crowded environments”.

With practices such as these taking place, in such crowded environments, with children who were mentally depressed, suffering from loss and abandonment, physically and institutionally abused, and usually half starved, historians should now have to re-evaluate the causes of the illnesses that killed tens of thousands of children housed in the orphanages of Australia. Just how many were caused by the fact that researchers felt that child welfare institutions were appropriate and convenient places to carry out their experiments?

And what of the children who survived the experiments? Take for example the 83 babies who contracted herpes because the experimental vaccine “was of no benefit”. The simple truth is we don’t know what happened to them, as there has been no follow-up. Nor has there been an apology, or restitution forthcoming for the physical and social injury of being infected with a highly stigmatising sexually transmitted disease.