UK: Boss of drug firm behind cervical cancer jabs for schoolgirls is on board of Ofsted

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Boss of drug firm behind cervical cancer jabs for schoolgirls is on board of

Ofsted

By Eileen Fairweather

Last updated at 11:39 PM on 05th July 2008

Blackburn, a senior vice president at GlaxoKline, has been

appointed to the board of Ofsted

Schools Secretary Ed Balls is at the centre of a controversy over the

appointment of a top executive with a drugs company to the board of

education watchdog Ofsted.

Blackburn, 53, is a senior vice-president at GlaxoKline, which is

being sued by hundreds of parents and patients who claim its drugs have

caused suicide and psychosis.

His appointment came two weeks before the company won a reported £100million

contract to vaccinate all schoolgirls of 12 and 13 against the sexually

transmitted virus linked to cervical cancer. Family campaigners argued that

the jabs would ‘normalise’ childhood sex.

Mr Blackburn’s new role has been met with such disquiet that one childcare

expert boycotted an Ofsted conference on Friday, and urged others to make a

similar stand.

Announcing the appointment, Mr Balls, one of Gordon Brown’s closest advisers

said Mr Blackburn had a ‘passion’ for helping children.

But critics fear GSK’s place on the Ofsted board has given it instant moral

authority and has commercially strengthened its position at a time when

children are being targeted by the pharmaceutical industry.

They point to the rise in the use of prescription pills to improve behaviour

and aid memory and concentration. Some have been linked to depression and

violence in children.

Labour MP Graham Stringer said: ‘It (GSK) is looking at new markets to

create and I am disturbed that someone from Glaxo is considered appropriate

for a position with Ofsted.’

Others said the appointment demonstrated an unhealthily cosy relationship

between the Government and GSK, the world’s second biggest pharmaceutical

company, formerly known as Glaxo Wellcome.

Last year its chief executive Pierre Garnier was appointed by Gordon

Brown to his new Business Council, while Children’s Minister Margaret Hodge

made the company’s chairman a member of the Higher Education Funding Council

But the latest appointment places the drugs multinational at the heart of

childcare.

A girl is given the cervical cancer vaccine. GlaxoKline has the

£100million contract to vaccinate all schoolgirls aged 12 and 13

Labour and GSK are also linked through the cash-for-honours controversy.

Although GSK stresses it does not make donations to political parties, it

has invested heavily in a firm run by a man who has.

In 2004 Labour awarded a peerage to party donor Dr Drayson, founder of

vaccine firm PowderJect pharmaceuticals, and made him Minister for Defence

Procurement. It later emerged that Glaxo Wellcome had invested £175million

in PowderJect.

Mr Blackburn was one of four businessmen installed on the Ofsted board last

month. ‘They bring with them a breadth of private sector experience and a

passion to help improve the lives of children and learners,’ said Mr Balls.

As well as setting Ofsted’s ‘strategic priorities’, the 12-strong

non-executive board is required to ‘safeguard and promote the rights and

welfare of children’.

Mr Blackburn is financial controller at GSK. Mr Balls’s department insisted

he was appointed to Ofsted on merit and was not representing GSK, but

questions were last night raised about his suitability. Child protection

expert Liz Davies asked whether he would understand ‘key childcare issues

such as why new systems are failing to keep children safe from harm.’

Schools Secretary Ed Balls made the controversial decision to appoint Mr

Blackburn to the board of Ofsted

As well as regulating education, Ofsted is responsible for monitoring

children in care.

Outlining his reasons for pulling out of the Ofsted conference he was due to

address, childcare expert Phil Frampton blamed GSK’s history of testing

drugs on children in care.

The New York health authority recently investigated claims that drugs were

tested on 100 babies and toddlers with HIV at the city’s Incarnation

Children’s Centre. GSK was one of the firms that supplied the drugs.

At the time it insisted that all trials followed stringent standards and

complied with local laws and regulations.

But Mr Frampton – who called Mr Blackburn’s appointment ‘really outrageous’

– said: ‘Drug trials using children in care are a modern form of child

slavery, only more insidious.

‘Do we want the modern Bodysnatchers at the heart of the care system using

their position on Ofsted as a cover for their global exploitation of

children in care?’

In 2000 Glaxo Wellcome was accused of extraordinary ‘obfuscation’ by

Ireland’s senate after a commission unsuccessfully sought files concerning

vaccine trials it conducted in the Sixties and Seventies on children in care

homes. At the time the firm said: ‘Glaxo Wellcome regrets any distress that

may have been caused to individuals involved in these trials.’

Last night GSK rejected criticism of Mr Blackburn’s appointment and

described Mr Frampton’s comments as ‘without foundation’. It added: ‘GSK

acts properly and responsibly in the conduct of all its clinical trials,

including those related to children.’

GSK faces class actions in Britain and the US by hundreds of families whose

children allegedly became suicidal, psychotic or addicted after taking its

anti-depressant Seroxat. The company was accused of concealing its adverse

effects on children for more than a decade.

Legal action in the US recently forced GSK to publish studies showing that

children on Seroxat are twice as likely to have suicidal thoughts as those

on a dummy pill. Although GSK says: ‘Seroxat has never been approved by EU

or US regulators as a medicine for those under 18,’ many doctors legally

give it to children in a practice known as ‘off label’ prescribing.

Schools and the state childcare boom present a lucrative market for drugs

including those to treat obesity, unplanned pregnancies, sexually

transmitted diseases and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).

GSK markets an anti-ADHD drug in the United States – amphetamine Dexedrine –

and may yet try to market it or a similar drug in Britain.

It recommends Dexedrine for ‘stabilising’ patients from three years to 16

who exhibit ‘distractibility, short attention span and hyperactivity’.

Critics say this could describe any normal toddler or hormonal teen, and

drugs should be a last resort.

Since 2006, the US Food and Drug Administration has made ADHD drugs

manufacturers provide warnings of potentially fatal reactions in those with

weak hearts, and the risk of ‘psychotic or manic symptoms, for example

hallucinations, delusional thinking, or mania in children and adolescents

without a prior history’.

The FDA has linked ADHD drugs to 25 deaths in the US, and they are allegedly

linked to the deaths of seven in Britain.

Ofsted said in a statement: ‘The Ofsted Board determines the strategic

direction for Ofsted and ensures that its functions are performed

efficiently and effectively, but has no operational responsibilities.

‘ Blackburn was selected to become a non-executive member of the Ofsted

Board for his financial expertise and experience. He is appointed as an

individual and does not represent GlaxoKline.’