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Saturday, May 25, 2013

The BBC journalist who believed he was possessed by Lucifer

A couple of years ago I wrote about the medical drama faced by Malcolm Brabant, then the BBC's Athens-based stringer.

He had suffered a massive reaction after taking a vaccine that was supposed to protect him from yellow fever. After an initial fever, in which "he was in a limbo between life and death", he went on to endure psychotic episodes that landed him a psychiatric hospital.

Now Brabant, who has been in and out of hospital ever since, has written a book about his terrible experiences, Malcolm is a little unwell, which is described as a shocking narrative of his descent into madness.

According to the blurb, the book "chronicles a Kafkaesque journey through insanity during which Brabant first believes he is the Messiah and later, the Devil." It goes on to say:

"He imagines he is visited by guardian angels, close friends and relatives who died premature deaths, and who set him impossible tasks to prove that he was the Chosen One.

At his lowest point, certain he is possessed by Lucifer while in a locked psychiatric ward, Brabant… attempts suicide in order to save the world."

Brabant wrote a moving account of his sufferings in the Daily Mail in January last year.

It explained the reason he took the vaccine, in order to go to the Ivory Coast to shoot a series of films about victims of the country's civil conflict for Unicef, the United Nations children's fund.

And it detailed the initial reaction followed by hallucinations, episodes of psychotic behaviour interspersed with priors of lucidity.

The illness caused him to lose his BBC job in Athens as doctors struggled to discover the right combination of medication to effect a cure.

Meanwhile, his wife, Trine, was taking on Sanofi Pasteur, the pharmaceutical manufacturer responsible for producing the yellow fever vaccine, known as Stamaril.

And many of Brabant's friends have rallied round to support him in his fight to secure justice from Sanofi Pasteur, which has denied any responsibility after holding an investigation into the vaccine batch used by Brabant.

They include Geoff Adams-Spinks and Nicholas Dobrik who are launching a campaign. There is more information on the Brabant v Sanofi Pasteur Facebook page. You can follow events on Twitter. And change.org is hosting a petition, which you can sign here.


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