Bendectin And Birth Defects (Page 12)

I took this drug in the 1970's while pregnant. Am looking for the side effects to the babies. Drug has been off the market for many years. Not sure on correct spelling. Used for nausea and vomiting during pregnancy. Thank you for any help you can send me. Sincerely, Dana.

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emtridoc, very good post! Yes, statistics [like triage, not forgetting that encumbrances are known to come in 3's] are important, but they're so easily skewed, and it all comes down to what's acceptable and what's not. We mustn't forget, too, that neonates are easily switched to the wrong parents, deliberately or otherwise, so that'd throw a big spanner into any research work if gone undiscovered. It's easier now to uncover switches per DNA but its utility wasn't always available. The DNA process isn't infallible either simply because we must trust what the analysts state in their reports, and different DNA experts will even vehemently disagree with each other.

I note too that your FDA was not enamoured at all with our CSL company here in OZ. I think it involved inadequate inventory etc which is strange considering that nowadays we've got computerisation's assistance.

I wonder how many switched babies [not legally adopted] with later-surfacing abnormalities were taken home and reared by mums that were never prescribed anti-emetics, and they never suspected any anomaly re parentage. People might think that this is highly unlikely but many deformed and disabled children are willingly adopted by childless couples who'll fork out very large amounts of money and effort if necessary for the joy of a child. Plus the fact that some births [both stillborn and liveborn] are never recorded, and then there's designer babies and any culling involved therefrom per abortions etc. If all current statistics are considered to be true and accurate, then the figures recorded can't ever be any less, but they can be a whole lot more! And that's statistic's Achilles Heel.

If a person knows exactly what someone else is looking for, plus exactly where it's situated, it's so easily hidden from them in advance, or better still replaced with something else that'll lead to a more favourable outcome for the switche'roo_ster, and of course, people like William MacBride et al. would've made it quite clear to all and sundry exactly what was being placed under the monstrous microscope. I'm sure you know how easy it is to obscure something. When we see how easily a magician does things whilst he/she is under intense scrutiny and he/she does sometimes declare beforehand exacly what they're about to do, and we all still miss their legerdemain, and we know it's impossible what they've done, but can't prove otherwise c'OZ' we saw it with our own eyes.

How dedicated were Sandy's [#207] study-researchers in Toronto if they didn't follow up with an at least scant report to her and her son, or any further inquiry as to whether any new problems had surfaced in the meantime?

Let us focus on pecuniary interests for a moment, and not just immediate pecuniary interests, because like life, businesses like to carry on for quite a while too: If a pharmaceutical company [for example] was absolutely confident that one or several of their products didn't and couldn't have caused a serious problem like teratogenicity, then why take it off the market? To do so might prove that the particular drug was responsible for the problems if they suddenly lessened dramatically. Far better for them to keep selling the brand but alter its composition to something approaching that of [but not actually] a placebo. Product brands are worth zillions in some cases but hardly ever worth more than a company's name and goodwill. To pull a product is an act surely never done lightly. Pulling a product could in fact be more disadvantageous in the long run. I think I've mentioned before that thalidomide was still being sold [up to only a few years ago at least] in 3rd world countries to combat Hansen's disease [leprosy].

Returning to what's acceptable and what's not, I believe that, like many things in life, anti-emetics are necessary in some cases to sustain all-important life, and if there's a chance, slight or great, that they'll cause abnormalities, then so be it as far as the authorities are concerned. I don't blame anyone for adhering to that principle iff[sic] lives are on the line but anything less would be iffy indeed. Plus there's many situations where a person, be they an experienced medico or not, just doesn't know for sure if a prescription is really required. I well remember hearing stories about how an antivenene was just as dangerous as the snake's venom and therefore was only administered as a last resort if the victim [alright, patient] looked like they were going to bite the dust! Believe it or not, a father [a herpetologist I think] here in Australia has been charged for allowing his daughter to be bitten several times by a Taipan, the deadliest snake in the world! The things we do!

Looks like tongue-in-cheek time's come round again: "For millions of Americans, each week becomes a stressful triage between work and home that leaves them feeling guilty, exhausted.......and angry" [Jill Smolowe]. (The ellipsis is mine c'OZ' some people are quite averse to using the odd Oxford [alright, Harvard] Comma here and there. That's my excuse--for its insertion--and I'm sticking to it!) I wonder if it's an offence to be a, ummm, serial comma user?

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emtridoc, I'd never suggest that your motivation was nefarious....but your spelling of it [nefarioius] was. Wicked indeed! You're the doc and here's me, a fully fledged and paid-up member of the laity trying to inject some pointed humour...but I'm not trying to needle you or anything you understand.

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Emitridoc and Interlineal peruser,got find a chat room or better yet, facebook eachother

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ILP, Your needling brings only a smile and I appreciate the thoughtful responses.

The 'ol switcher-o? I must confess, I never considered that. Hope it's not so. Certainly many more precautions taken these days, but I imagine it may still occur.

Thalomide is being looked at again for the treatment of certain cancers - interesting.

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war eagle, you've possibly a predicative point to declare regarding matters medical but, unless I've missed it, which is quite possible, you've not yet specified it, but it's manifest that you've a good eye for detail.

emtridoc, re the switcheroo, it's said that anything's possible in this world, but even from things that, prima facie, seem terrible, good things can arise per: 'from each action exists its exact opposite etc'., and of course, 'time' always plays a hand [second, minute, hour...millennium?] in most things.

Although more scrutiny may now be set in place re bona fide parentage of neonates, will any or most of the important former teratogenic research on lineage etc, for but one example, be visited again taking everything salient into consideration? Methinks not. Many of those involved are now deceased.The decks will just be basically cleared and the 'game' will start over. Yes, we can't undo many things past, but as long as they don't re-occur seems to be the order of the day. But there's much likelihood that we've not seen the last of such things. The fact that thalidomide--and certain other drugs--hasn't been abolished, and still used somewhere for some reason--macabre as it may seem--provides an opportunity for further discoveries [beneficial or detrimental] to be made. Sometimes the longest way round is the quickest way there, with a curt corollary being that, if a 'post' is cut too short, it just won't measure up in being able to stand its ground...and that's not the hole story either!

We've lost much flora/fauna--and any inherent crucial wealth of answers--to extinction, and if certain people had their way, we'd also lose the right of free speech and/or posts but for that big brother called democratisation. I think he [democracy] is d_eter'nally related in some way to my good buddy 'vigil'.

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war eagle, you've possibly a predicative point to declare regarding matters medical but, unless I've missed it, which is quite possible, you've not yet specified it, but it's manifest that you've a good eye for detail.

emtridoc, re the switcheroo, it's said that anything's possible in this world, but even from things that, prima facie, seem terrible, good things can arise per: 'from each action exists its exact opposite etc'., and of course, 'time' always plays a hand [second, minute, hour...millennium?] in most things.

Although more scrutiny may now be set in place re bona fide parentage of neonates, will any or most of the important former teratogenic research on lineage etc, for but one example, be visited again taking everything salient into consideration? Methinks not. Many of those involved are now deceased.The decks will just be basically cleared and the 'game' will start over. Yes, we can't undo many things past, but as long as they don't re-occur seems to be the order of the day. But there's much likelihood that we've not seen the last of such things. The fact that thalidomide--and certain other drugs--hasn't been abolished, and still used somewhere for some reason--macabre as it may seem--provides an opportunity for further discoveries [beneficial or detrimental] to be made. Sometimes the longest way round is the quickest way there, with a curt corollary being that, if a 'post' is cut too short, it just won't measure up in being able to stand its ground...and that's not the hole story either!

We've lost much flora/fauna--and any inherent crucial wealth of answers--to extinction, and if certain people had their way, we'd also lose the right of free speech and/or posts but for that big brother called democratisation. I think he [democracy] is d_eter'nally related in some way to my good buddy 'vigil'.

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emtridoc, methinks the following quotational anecdote does evidently have some truth in it for one and all, and has done since time immemorial it seems, ergo, as it's thought that its inclusion hereinafter is timely, I thought I'd best put it in now since it appears both mirthly magistral, make no mistake, and not p_unsurprisingly....ready-mixed.

"Of all the offspring of Time, Error is the most ancient, and is so old and familiar an acquaintance, that Truth, when discovered, comes upon most of us like an intruder, and meets the intruder's welcome."

I can't bring myself to advocate your eschewing all apples either, or you could become severely afflicted with what's known in the industry as an orchar_distoma, and I'm [app]led to believe that those so afflicted are the persons who'll always try to hurriedly worm their way in to see the doctor without having first secured themselves an appleointment...err...appointment. It's a wormy...err...worry I know, but I feel that to flesh things out properly, we must always first look within, and likely as not, life's situations, like the worm, as for all of us, will turn out for the best that's yet to come_stible!

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emtridoc, methinks the following quotational anecdote does evidently have some truth in it for one and all, and has done since time immemorial it seems, ergo, as it's thought that its inclusion hereinafter is timely, I thought I'd best put it in now since it appears both mirthly magistral, make no mistake, and not p_unsurprisingly....ready-mixed.

"Of all the offspring of Time, Error is the most ancient, and is so old and familiar an acquaintance, that Truth, when discovered, comes upon most of us like an intruder, and meets the intruder's welcome."

I can't bring myself to advocate your eschewing all apples either, or you could become severely afflicted with what's known in the industry as an orchar_distoma, and I'm [app]led to believe that those so afflicted are the persons who'll always try to hurriedly worm their way in to see the doctor without having first secured themselves an appleointment...err...appointment. It's a wormy...err...worry I know, but I feel that to flesh things out properly, we must always first look within, and likely as not, life's situations, like the worm, as for all of us, will turn out for the best that's yet to come_stible!

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There are a few birds who, after singing, tilt their heads as if to be thinking: "Who just made that beautiful sound?". The two latest posters seem to be in a contest to see who can be the most eloquent with their postings, using many important words to impress. They must think of some of us that use common words to be rather uneducated. It will be interesting, when the use of Bendectin is finally proven to have caused many of the problems that are mentioned if they would be willing to use their superior verbosity to talk to the drug companies on our behalf. (War Eagle.....thank you for your comment).
(Also, in the papers I have written, professors have always instructed me to capitalize the word Asperger's, as it was named after Hans Asperger).

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Golly gee, Betty Jill, you got me. You are absolutely correct that Asperger's should be capitalized. ILP corrects my spelling frequently, but I don't mind. I never claimed to be a great writer, just know a little medicine. But when I get published I'll be certain to let you proof read my transcripts for me to catch those errors. In the meantime, I don't believe failing to capitalize Asperger's changes much about the association of genetics with the prevalence of the disease, nor the fact that only one child of 14 siblings being struck would be expected, and not unusual in the least. But you can focus on my grammer, if you prefer. It's ok by me.

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@emtridoc: Apples---wonderful fruit. A worm found in one apple does not necessarily 'spoil the whole bowl/bunch/barrel.' But, if that wormy apple was among others in the same bowl, from the same orchard, same tree, even plucked from the same branch, then the next one out of that bowl has a pretty good 'chance' of containing a worm, no? When money becomes a priority, sometimes the 'worm' is never 'seen' by those who turn a blind eye and so the worm does not exist. Did this happen with Bendectin? Perhaps, and very likely, we will never know. But, an Rx for corrective lenses couldn't hurt. Oh, my...I'm heading to a place where the I'm thinking that the eyebrows of those on this site may be rising higher and higher, so.... As far as those 'barbs,' any apologies seem unnecessary when taken as compliments, but my apologies anyway!

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Trying, again, to 'clarify.' Last post would not 'take,' so here goes again...I inadvertently used my nickname and, for what it's worth, "Lexie" is me, Alexa. God Bless us... Everyone!

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Hey Lexie/Alexa,
That's exactly the right question to ask. Is there a pattern? Then is there a connection to the pattern? Then hopefully you can find a causal mechanism (though obviously not always). Another way to look at is this way: I could easily find 100 women who took bendictin and had healthy children. I know a few of them myself. So could we conclude from that experience that bendictin is safe? No, it's just anecdotal experience. But many studies were done on bendictin and birth defects and no pattern was found. And by the way there are many ways to do studies, some better than others. The best is what's called double blind placebo controlled. That's the kind where both the investigator and the subject are blinded to whether or not the subject received placebo (sugar pill) or investigational drug. Then after the results are in you reveal who took what and see if there's a difference. That's not the kind that was done on bendictin. What mother would subject her unborn child to a test where the outcome was "does this cause harm to your child"? Not to say history isn't filled with some such horrible testing - the Nazis did it to Jews and ask the families of those who suffered from the tuskegee syphilis experiement. Now, to my knowledge no specific studies have been done on bendictin and Asperger's (or specifically on some of the other maladies brought up on this site). But I do know in the United States the incidence of Asperger's is going up. Though it may be a phenomenon of increased recognition, it certainly doesn't appear to be going down. And this with bendictin off the market. Admittedly this doesn't mean there's not a connection, but certainly would suggest there are other causes that are more likely and we don't understand them as of yet. The main point being that a few cases or even a few hundred cases don't point to a pattern given the frequency with which bendictin was prescribed and prevalence of Asperger's. I will readily acknowledge your point that money turns heads in many ways and on both sides, sadly, and sometimes very subtly. There have been studies that show a drug company offering free pens to physicians changes their prescribing habits, though most physicians would describe themselves as immune to such attempts.

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Using the possessive apostrophe in Aspergers syndrome, as in "Asperger's" [not a capital offence!], causes an unnecessary and largely incorrect title to the syndrome simply because Hans Asperger was not afflicted with the syndrome himself, but studied it. Just the same as with the inaugurally-titled Down's syndrome now being more aptly titled simply as Down syndrome. John Langdon Down, the British physician who described the syndrome in 1866 didn't have the syndrome himself either. Lou Gehrig's disease[Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis], which does correctly feature an apostrophe, is predicated on the fact that Gehrig, the famous American baseball player, was actually struck down by the disease himself. Whether a person wishes to use possessive and/or contractive apostrophes or not, is entirely their choice, be it occasioned by a lack of understanding and/or nonchalance. For those persons who rankle at the terminology in use I can only suggest that they spend some time earnestly seeking resolve per the many free dictionaries available online, "The Free Dictionary" by Farlex being but one fine example. Many folk have done it [if the 3 billion+ cited hits are to be believed] and will possibly continue so. It's so easy to learn something per this method if one so wishes to instead of merely languishing in the luxury of complaint and attempting to 'shoot the messenger[s]'. Sorry emtridoc, but one can only duck so many sharply-barbed arrows by oneself without feeling singled out!] Shades of the lyrics in that great song: "Please Mr Custer, I don't wanna go!" One must remember too, it's said that: "Medicine is nothing without Latin", and given that this people's forum concerns interests in medicine, inter alia, perhaps it's time to up the ante a tad and commence waxing lyrically Latinate, and I'm sure Betty Jill would enjoy this immensely since Latin too runs rife in musical composition. Perhaps someone should have told all the famous composers of music to annotate their work in simple English instead of Latin because it would make the playing of such sound so much better! Yeah right! I must confess that it was when I first saw, at the age of 5 years, all of those lovely Latin words accompanying my staved notes when I started playing the pianoforte...err...sorry, piano, it gave me a love of both the sound and textual forms of language, so if anything's to blame, I'm gonna put music behind the 8 ball, only to obviate my not having to face the music you understand! And what was Frederic Chopin, who was Polish by birth, doing messing around with high fallutin' Latin words like 'scherzando', when he could have just written, 'playfully' or 'jokingly', in plain old English? And I won't start on all those very long, musical and otherwise, German words that Mark Twain who, because he couldn't learn German properly, because of its myriad grammatical forms, desperately tried to disparage the language. Yes, poor old Mark thought at the time, "If I can't learn it, then I'll try to kill it off!" But p_unlike Twain, it [German] still has a life of its own passing..err..parsing! Shame on all of them...NOT!

Emtridoc, you probably already know this but I've found that the best way to deal with those barbs is to just push them right through and never try pulling them ouch..err..out!

I wonder what the Latin word for 'vigil' is if it's not in fact 'vigil' per se. I s'pose I could go and have a look see for it now but I think I'll just keep a sharp eye out for it next time....c'OZ' I'm not yet done with all these barbs^^^.

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Muphry, like Murphy, is alive and well. There should be a law against their longevity! The beginning of my last post, #236, should have read as: Asperger syndrome, not Aspergers syndrome.

Things are looking up too! I didn't get my usual "unable to save your reply" which before caused me to repost, hence the double-posts. I think the double-posts could be due to the fact that I shouldn't have purchased this laptop when I saw all that carbon paper sticking out from underneath the hard drive! How they managed to bend and fit all the steam pipes and blued paper in there is beyond me!

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Oh Geez,are we done here. Enough Philosophy,

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It certainly looks like someone's 'done' with life, literally. I wonder where they managed to plagiarise that little gem from? A whole half of one line of text!That would just have to qualify as a gargantuan mental effort of the first water indeed. I hope that there's many more such concise and cogent contributions to follow, but we'll wager there ain't. Not to equal that one (well...half of one anyway). And certainly not from that very same quarter (or should that be half?)! It's not difficult to see why patents are so important and sought after in droves.

It's a big world out there y'know. Go get 'em!

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A article features in 'The West', a Western Australian newspaper, about a woman [Kayleen Freeman] in the southern coastal town of Esperance who has a 40 year old son [Nicky] who's trapped in the body of a 10 year old child. Nicky was born one month overdue with hydrocephalous - fluid on the brain and a large head.

Kayleen wonders if Nicky's multiple disabilities were caused by an anti-histamine she took for allergies during her pregnancy.

"Five women in Esperance who took it [anti-histamine] had spontaneous abortions and another who took it had a child with a serious disability," she said.

University of WA medical genetics professor David Ravine said Mr Freeman's case was extraordinarily rare and he had never come across anything like it in his 22-year career. "There are so many biological aspects here about what we could learn from these unusual genetic events" he said. "The thing we learn in this field particularly, is to obviously treasure the exceptional cases and do as much as we can for the family".

In the days following Nicky's birth, doctors told Kayleen her son would not live.

Methinks they [doctors] forgot about that age-old a[d]dage, "Life begins at 40", but due to the fact that it's generally considered that Nicky is only ageing one [1] year in four [4], Nicky may need to soldier on for another 120 years to prove the point conclusively...and I hope he does too! Shades of Mark Twain who, whilst in London, upon learning that his obituary had featured in several newspapers, cleared up matters by telling the reporter who'd stopped by to check on him that: "The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated!"

Were it possible, I think Nicky would probably like to ask of Mr Twain if he wouldn't mind moving to the end of the queue!

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Now If the circle talking latin head screws are finished for a minute, I would like to personally thank all of the truly shocked, and confused posters that were affected in some way by a health care mishap. As far as I can see this has been a great publicity outlet, if nothing else... The first hundred comments are at least available for any future victims to see, thank you all for sharing and thank you peoples med forum and thank you internet but I bid you all farewell and best of luck... Toodles.

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Just found this site. I took Bendictine for nausea/vomiting during my pregnancies, 1976, 1977, 1979, 1982; my daughter born in 1977 has same birth defects i see listed from this site, bicorniate uterus meaning deformed uterus heart shape instead of pear shaped with a septum down the middle, also has heart problems pfo, hole didn't close in the heart after birth, other heart problems, valves, rhythms problems, also auto immune problems, my boys also had problems too. I took the drug a lot during the 1976, 77, 79 pregnancy and they say it was off the market in 82 but I think I took it then too...WOULD LIKE ANY FEED BACK ON CLASS ACTION LAWSUITS; seems like there is definitely a link with birth defects and this drug. I was the type of person I didn't take any drugs in those years except that and prenatal vitamins. email address [email protected] [1]

[1] Editor's note - In order to protect privacy, we do not allow individuals to post their personal contact information on our discussion threads (except in some very rare cases).

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