A coroner has recommended that medical professionals report adverse reactions to Covid vaccines to the relevant authorities after he recorded a narrative verdict following the inquest of a 23-year-old man who died of a catastrophic brain bleed five days after he had a jab.
Roy Butler, of O’Reilly Road in Waterford, died at Cork University Hospital (CUH) on August 17th, 2021. He had received a Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine at a pharmacy five days earlier.
He was rushed to University Hospital Waterford on August 16th, 2021, and shortly afterwards moved to CUH after he became extremely ill at home.
Pathologist Dr Margaret Bolster, who carried out a postmortem on Mr Butler, last month told an inquest into his death that the case was "baffling and unusual".
Dr Bolster said she had carried out 20,000 postmortems over a period of 30 years. She said she had never come across a case of a young person dying of such a bleed where an explanation could not be given.
She said she could not make a causal link with the vaccine due to the paucity of scientific literature.
Dr Bolster said a link between the vaccine and the death of Mr Butler could not be established or ruled out.
On Thursday, coroner Philip Comyn made three recommendations in the case. The first related to the consideration of an information campaign with the public on the need to report adverse reactions to vaccines.
The second involved informing the public about "to whom they should report these adverse reactions."
The third recommendation was that the HSE and all medical and professional bodies are "reminded of the need to insure such adverse reactions are noted and reported promptly to the revelant authorities."
He said the lack of hard data concerning adverse reactions to vaccines and other medications "affects the ability of clinicians, medical experts and regulatory authorities in carrying out their duties." Mr Comyn noted that "not all adverse reactions are reported."
He thanked the Butler family for the “quiet dignity and respect” they had shown at the inquest. He acknowledged that “some of the evidence was very difficult for them to hear.”
He extended his deepest sympathies to the loved ones and friends of the deceased.
Mr Comyn said the majority of the medical evidence in the case was best described by assistant State patholoist Dr Margaret Bolster as: “I can neither rule in any link with the vaccine nor can I rule it out.”
He said that counsel for the Butler family had attributed the death of Roy to the vaccine.
“I can appreciate why the family place emphasis on the temporal nexus between the administration of the vaccine and the onset of symptoms. The symptoms other than that of intercerebral haemmorhage can equally be attributed to the everyday adverse reaction to the vaccine which are described as vaccine reactogenicity.
“I am not satisfied that the temporal connection meets the causation test on the balance of probabilities.”
In a statement following the verdict, the Butler family said Roy was a young man in the “prime of his life, with no health issues to indicate what would ultimately happen to him.
“Philip Comyn, the Cork City Coroner, made the decision to have an inquest into Roy’s death as a matter of public interest. As a family we feel it was important that Roy’s death was the subject of a Coroner’s inquest, and it highlights the vital role it has in our society as a fact finding inquiry.
“It allowed us the opportunity to understand more about the vaccine and discover whether there were other adverse events associated with it.”
The family said in the lead up to the inquest they received a report from Johnson and Johnson which identified 59 people (worldwide) who suffered intracranial haemorrhage within 10 days of receiving the vaccine.
“During evidence, another investigation revealed within 28 days of receiving the vaccine, 36 young adults suffered an intracranial bleed after the first dose, while two others suffered a bleed after a booster dose.”
They also pointed to the evidence of Dr Bolster, who said she had never come across a situation where she could not ascertain the cause of a young person's death.
