Document : the guinea pig kids.

Although there are well-known protests about drug testing on animals, less known is the drug testing that has taken place on children. Thie programmes investigates claims which show that medical scientists in Britain, America and Ireland used orphanages, hospices and foster homes to test drugs on vulnerable children left in the care of church or state. We hear the story of 44 year-old Mari Steed who was put up for adoption at Sacred Heart Convent near Cork in Southern Ireland. She has discovered that between her birth and 18 months old when she was adopted, she was used in medical trials to test the vaccine Trivax, used against diphtheria, tetanus and whooping cough which made her very ill. Was this done with her natural mother's consent? Further research shows there were a spate of trials on children and babies in the 1950s and 1960s, as well as trials of drugs like AZT on infants who contracted the HIV virus from their mothers.