Healthy Skepticism Library item: 7872
Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.
Publication type: Journal Article
't Hoen, Dukes MG.
Compensation for diethylstilbestrol (DES) injury
The Lancet 2007 Jan 20; 369:173-4
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140673607600877/fulltext
Abstract:
Society’s long struggle to compensate adequately the victims of drug injury seems to have progressed a little further as a result of two recent developments in the Netherlands and France about the long-running controversy of diethylstilbestrol.
The story of diethylstilbestrol is well known.1,2 Developed in the UK in
1938 as an unpatented lowcost synthetic oestrogen,3 the drug was used widely in pregnant women on the basis of an ill-founded theory that it could prevent miscarriage by countering possible hormonal deficiency.4 However, the many companies that seized on its commercial potential sometimes claimed much more: within a decade of diethylstilbestrol’s introduction, it was promoted as a necessary adjunct to every pregnancy, and as capable of developing “bigger and stronger babiesâ€,5 despite a lack of evidence and in the face of early warnings that the drug was carcinogenic…
