A coroner has reserved his verdict on the death of a 23-year-old man described by his mother as a “perfectly healthy boy”, who complained of feeling unwell immediately after getting a Covid vaccine and died five days later.
Cork City Coroner, Philip Comyn said he had much to consider after hearing three days of evidence at the inquest into the death of Roy Butler from O’Reilly Road, Cork Road, Waterford who died at Cork University Hospital on August 17th, 2021.
At the third day of the inquest at Cork City Coroner’s Court on Thursday, Assistant State Pathologist Dr Margaret Bolster said Mr Butler died from a spontaneous intra cerebral haemorrhage.
She could find no evidence to explain the cause of the bleed as he had suffered no trauma such as a head or skull injury and he had no underlying pathology.
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Dr Bolster said the death of a young healthy man like Mr Butler from a spontaneous intracerebral bleed was extremely rare and she had only encountered it once or twice before in performing 20,000 autopsies over 30 years. In those cases the person was elderly.
Asked by Ciara Davin BL, for the Butler family, if in the absence of any other explanation and by a process of elimination, it was reasonable to conclude Mr Butler’s death was due to the Janssen (Johnson & Johnson) Covid vaccine, Dr Bolster said she could not say that.
Pressed by Ms Davin if she could exclude Mr Butler’s getting the Covid vaccine as being the cause of his taking ill, suffering convulsions and ultimately suffering a brain haemorrhage that was to prove fatal, Dr Bolster said she could not either exclude or affirm such a possibility.
“I can’t rule it out, but neither can I say it (receiving the vaccine) was the cause of Mr Butler’s haemorrhage,” said Dr Bolster, adding there were not sufficient cases in the medical literature to enable her to make any finding between the spontaneous intracranial bleed and the vaccine.
“It is extremely rare. It (making the causal link) would have to be based on sound scientific evidence. I cannot say any more than I cannot rule it in or out and the correct procedure was to contact the National Drugs Advisory Board,” said Dr Bolster who agreed with Ms Davin it was a “baffling” case.
Consultant Neuropathologist at CUH, Dr Niamh Bermingham, worked on Mr Butler’s postmortem, and she similarly described Mr Butler’s death as “very unusual” in a young man as they could find no origin or explanation for his brain haemorrhage.
In her submission, Ms Davin argued that in the absence of other explanations and by a process of elimination, the only explanation on the balance of probabilities given the temporal proximity of Mr Butler’s death to getting the vaccine was that his death was due to getting the vaccine.
She asked the coroner to return what she believed was the only appropriate verdict - one of medical misadventure.
Counsel for Janssen, John Lucey SC told the coroner he was “constrained by the medical evidence” which was unable to ascertain any link between the death and the vaccine.
He said to return a verdict of death by medical misadventure would be “wholly misconstrued” and the only verdicts available in the case were either an open verdict or a narrative verdict simply detailing the circumstances of Mr Butler’s death.
Mr Comyn thanked both lawyers for their submissions and said he would reserve his decision but would email his ruling to lawyers for Janssen and the Butler family.
He sympathised with the Butler family on “the tragic loss of Roy in such difficult and unexpected circumstances”.
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