Chilling fear of silent thalidomide

In spite of all the evidence of dreadful adverse effects of medicinal drugs, the public's faith remains unshaken.

In the Commons a Government Minister aired her ignorance about thalidomide. I had to remind her that it WAS tested on animals. It was tested on rabbits including pregnant rabbits. No birth abnormalities were found until it was used on human guinea pigs. Now news of another silent killer has been found. The Independent reports.

Tens of thousands of British families are to be asked if they are victims of a drug given to pregnant women which can cause fatal illness in the second, and possibly even third, generations. Some women given the drug in this country have already obtained compensation in America.

Diethylstilboestrol (DES), a drug given to women for 30 years up to 1973, has been found to cause a rare form of vaginal and cervical cancer in some of the daughters of the women who took it, as well as fertility problems. Compensation of an estimated $1.5bn has been paid out in the US. There is even a suspicion that DES – known as the "silent Thalidomide" – can affect the grandchildren of those who took it'.

There is a splendid organisation campaigning to reveal that the lives of the 3.7 million animals used in medical procedures last year in the UK were wasted. The medical evidence is unreliable at best and worthless in millions of instances. Human bodies do not behave in the same way as animal bodies. Animals are dying to serve a useless myth.

Comments

[HuwOS]

I would have thought this DES situation was the perfect opportunity to stress the importance of independent fair testing of drugs and prescribing drugs only on the basis of evidence rather than hope, wishful thinking or anecdote.

The DES situation does show us is that back when it was popular the best evidence showed that DES did not help with what it was being prescribed for.

Basing prescriptions on that evidence would have meant that there would have been far fewer people suffering the consequences following on from the use of DES.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK66199/#ch2.s3