- LONDON (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.
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- 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.
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- 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of mumps vaccine virus was withdrawn in Canada after reports of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.
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- "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."
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- 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."
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- 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.
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- 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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