Vigil Continues; Fears Over Pouch Safety; Bhattacharyya Family Thank Public For Support; Care Home Closure; Fatal Used Pouches; Biological Class Divide.

They had interviews with families who couldn’t afford the FullLife plans, and interviews with the other parents who had lost their babies over the past three years.

Piotr published photos from the care homes outside London; dozens of children, toddlers to teenagers, crammed into huge dormitories. One reporter had figures – though it wasn’t clear where she’d got them – of higher instances of Down’s syndrome, cystic fibrosis and haemochromatosis in the homes than in the general population. The care pouches were used of course, the oldest on the market. Were they getting the same screening and health care? Were they becoming faulty with overuse?

One by one the FullLife board members resigned as memos were leaked and more documents appeared proving the cover-up. The way they had panicked after the first pouch death, the scale of research funding hidden in the accounts, even minutes of the meeting where they decided to offer natural birth as an alternative, just in case. For three years they’d tried to keep the growing risk of pouch death away from the public, and the addition of the NaturalBirth plan to their portfolio showed just how calculating they had been – they were trying to retain customers by putting an alternative in place before announcing the truth about the pouches. Four legal cases were pending, though it was widely assumed they would settle out of court. Piotr suspected more cases would quickly follow.

So far as he had been able to find out, none of the current board members had known there were similar problems with the earliest pre-clinical mouse trials. The founder of the company, Sylvia Ash, was the only one who had known – and it seemed she’d even destroyed Freida’s research in her determination to make the pouch seem perfect. She was the one who should have been prosecuted. But she had been dead for twenty years. He and Eva focused on making sure everyone knew the truth, understood the risks; and that they understood the risks were the same as with natural birth, too. There was no safer alternative here. The pouch was not to blame.

The director herself was the last to resign, though given her lack of public comment and continued support of the protesters it had seemed inevitable. Her statement said she valued every second she had spent at FullLife, but that she was not the right woman to lead the company forwards. Details of the break-ins came out too, including the one from a few weeks ago. All that had been stolen from FullLife was a box of red fleece pouch covers. Piotr thought it was probably poor parents who’d just wanted their pouch to look festive for Christmas. But he also wondered what else the police might be keeping hidden.