Bendectin And Birth Defects (Page 14)

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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I must say the childish insults I have been reading on this sight is beyond me ,You might as well go to facebook where most of that is,Are we adults or not,Every body have a nice day,

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emtridoc, there's a very interesting case of two switched-at-birth baby girls that took place in Wisconsin in 1951, and the two families knew each other fairly well too. One of the two mothers suspected all along that the baby she took home wasn't hers because this baby girl weighed circa 2 pounds less than the known birth weight of her real daughter, yet she still chose, to an appreciable degree, to sit on this secret for 43 years before finally letting the cat out of the bag. Many folk did suspect for quite some time that there'd been a switch and they made mention of such. The story features on 'This American Life' with Ira Glass, program #360, called, "Switched at Birth". If much or everything in the story is true, it does make one wonder just how much credence should be placed on medical records/research of all kinds when biological parents will deliberately try to obfuscate something so important, for so long, that could have been so easily and properly rectified. Apparently there was no money or other form of reward involved, but just imagine if there had've been, and also if a very heavy penalty applied for those found guilty to any extent of such exploits.

On the Judicial Opinion page [1 of 3], from the "Birth Defect Research For Children, Inc" web site, concerning _ Blum vs. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals Inc., _ there is, I believe, evidence of a very cunning ploy documented therein, an excerpt of which reads verbatim as follows:

- "In essence, defendant asks this court to declare, as an unalterable precept of Pennsylvania law, that the drug Bendectin cannot cause birth defects." -

Whilst not only that court, but any other also, might make a finding and declare that Bendectin was not the cause of Jeffery Blum being born with clubfeet, it would be drawing the longest of bows to ever state categorically, anywhere, that Bendectin cannot cause deformities.

Another interesting anomaly is that the term "lucked out", which features in the switched-babies story, has a complete opposite meaning in Australia and elsewhere from its meaning the the United States. It's as precarious in use as the word 'sanction'. Methinks that use of the word 'sanction' should perhaps be forever sanctioned, but not necessarily made an unalterable precept of any law...lest some imprudent soul decide to sanctify its so being!

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bendectin until 1981 was a 3 ingredient drug sold over the counter in canada.the ingredients were doxylamine succinate, dycyclomine hydrochloride,vitamin b6

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my yougest son was born witha brain malformation called lobar holoprosencephly. he is quadiplegic and developmentally delayed in born 1978.

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the name is bendectin. a reporter told me in the 1980,s that this drug had been sold in japan under the name dectamin. in the 1960,s the drug was given to women scheduled for abortion. the resulting malformations were examined and the drug was withdrwn.

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Fred, Sorry to hear about your son. I think you meant dicyclomine also known as bentyl. It's an antispasmodic used for stomach cramps. It was not an ingredient in bendictin.
Here's a snippet from a NY Times article in the 80's regarding bendictin: "The judge reviewed scientific testimony presented in the trial, including 21 published epidemiological studies. ''There is now nearly universal scientific consensus,'' he concluded, that Bendictin contains no substances that cause birth defects. I know that doesn't change anything about your son, but maybe you don't have feel guilty that it was due to the medication.

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I also took Bendictine 35 years ago. My daughter also has a misshapen uterus and gave birth to a premature baby last year as she was unable to go full term.

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i iam a victim of debondox and have never had any answers my mum took it in the 70,s nif u want any info my email is

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I too took this drug and now my daughter has been told she has birth defect of her fallopion tubes never developing. SO her only means of conception is invetro. I did find a website that said some of the women who took this saw birth defects with female babies in thier repoductive systems. I am looking into this to see if my daughter was affected and how a lawsuit can help compensate her having to under INVETRO

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emtridoc, the judge you mention in #268 simply cannot "conclude" whilst there is only "nearly universal scientific concensus". "Near enough, is not good enough." It's nice to have closure but there's many folk about still with an open mind. Too many times [not enough, really], those who veritably do know better have gone against an overwhelming grain to prove a point, and some have succeeded. Nicolaus Copernicus did not wish to offend anyone or have scorn heaped upon himself with his theory on heliocentrism, but he still [fearfully] went ahead with disproving what was then the general concensus, and he did it in spades. Nobel Laureates Barry Marshall and Robin Warren are another two prime examples of those who knew and know better, as we all now do [but I'll bet there's still a few disbelievers], concerning Helicobacter pylori as being the cause of most peptic ulcers. It's easy to believe that no bacteria could survive in potent stomach acidity, but by all accounts, they do. Marshall has been quoted as saying in 1998 that "everyone was against me, but I knew I was right". He even deliberately infected himself by drinking a Petri dish of cultured Helicobacter pylori to prove an outcome. But a most amazing thing is that German researchers had published several studies during the early 20th century, positing that bacterial infection was the principal cause of stomach ulcers, but they failed to attract wider interest or demonstrate an acceptable proof. I wonder if they too, were too fearful of offending the then establishment's status quo.

The last person to be executed in Australia, Ronald Ryan, was a very sad indictment indeed. The judge, Sir John Starke, who passed the death sentence on Ryan later stated categorically that he, the judge, was not comfortable with the conviction per se, let alone having to pass mandatory capital punishment upon that conviction, but he did so, and he said that he did so because the Premier of Victoria, Sir Henry Bolte, insisted that it be carried out. The judge even had the option of stepping down from his role, but he didn't. The irony here is that a "conviction" is meant to be a "belief"! Years later, a prison officer confessed that it was he, and not Ryan, who accidently shot his prison officer colleague, George Hodson. Shades of "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance". Australia has now, as a consequence of Ryan's suspect conviction and execution, no capital punishment. It not only is not right, it is not for the "greater good", especially when left in the hands of those who should know better, but evidently don't.

Politics, Law, and Medicine, are not good bedfellows. The trouble is that things are always said to be done for the "greater good", but this doesn't necessarily always make it right [correct]. This is what I predicate the globe's use of Bendectin and other drugs on, viz, for the "greater good". If Bendectin did save the lives of many pregnant women, and their foetuses, then the "greater good" prevailed, but I still strongly suspect that for many women, but most importantly, their babies with abnormalities, Bendectin/Debendox/Diclectin was not innocuous.

Best of health to one and all...always.

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Cheryl,
You may want to read through some of the many posts on this site to see the other opinions. I can tell you that the overwhelming conclusion of the scientific community (not the drug company community) is that bendictin did not cause birthdefects. Birthdefects occur at the same rate in the children of women who took the drug vs. those who did not.

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There's a very interesting expose` called "A noble cause" [with transcript] about drug marketing. It's on Australia's ABC Radio National programme 'Background Briefing' [16 Oct 2011]. A former pharmaceutical company insider called Petra Helesic blows the whistle with sordid details of what occured when she was promoting new drugs to doctors as part of her employment. The anti-depressant drug called Cymbalta receives an adverse mention too.

A most poignant exerpt of what Petra said whilst trying to sell drugs [possibly Cymbalta] to doctors reads as follows:

- 'And we used to say to doctors,' "Doctor, you know, say to your patients, if they take this drug and they feel sick that this is how they know the drug is working." -

Sickening, isn't it? What a bonus! Take a new drug and get to feel sick as a freebie side-effect, to let you know that recovery is on the way! It's really the exact converse concept to the desirable expectation of relief when taking an anti-nausea drug like Bendectin/Debendox/Diclectin. I wonder what the patients, referred to above, would think about the drug's efficacy if they didn't feel sick after having taken it, when they fully expected to [and posssibly wanted to] feel sick because they'd been told that feeling sick was an indicator of recovery! It seems to me that Petra's former employer wanted to set a pernicious precedent by cunningly trying to get patients used to experiencing an unnecessary and likely dangerous side-effect, possibly to disguise the drug's incapability of providing any therapeutic benefit. If a person felt sick as a result of having taken a certain drug then obviously they'd feel better when that course was finished. This cunning desired setting of a precedent, of getting the patients used to feeling sick is just like the devious situation referred to in post #264, where the court's defendant wanted the court to declare, as an unalterable precept of Pennsylvania law, that the drug Bendectin cannot cause birth defects. It's not much wonder that Petra decided to get out of what has, veritably, been called a sleazy industry. Apart from making one want to throw-up in the usual sense, I can see that many people would be faced with the dilemma of just what to throw-up first, the contents of their stomach, or their hands...in despair!

Full marks to the FDA for checking up on CSL and discovering that CSL's laboratory staff were not, inter alia, wearing face masks during the pre-formulation stage of Fluvax production. This possibly explains why young children were having convulsions after being innoculated with Fluvax. Folk may wish to download "The Australian" newspaper's article [17 Oct 2011] entitled 'CSL chief admits mistakes over antibiotic supply.'

Be sure to take particular note of what he says in the very last line of the article. I did say before [in post #272] that "near enough is not good enough", but CSL's chief, Dr Brian McNamee, puts it so simply, and truthfully, by saying, as the very last two words of the newspaper's article, "Not enough"! He's too much! Not only does mankind not know enough about these processes but it's quite evident that simply "not enough" is being done to ensure that product is not contaminated. The failure of CSL's laboratory staff to wear face masks is paralleled with that which occured long ago, in the mid 1800's, when doctors who were dissecting cadavers then went straight to perform internal examinations of pregnant women without first having disinfected their hands by giving them a judicious scrubbing with disinfectant. According to the Wikipedia page on 'Ignatz Semmelweis', a Hungarian physician who was described as the "Saviour of Women", some of the doctors back then [mid 1800's] were offended at the suggestion that they should wash their hands before performing examinations! Admittedly, back then, doctors were unaware of the dangers of contamination, but in this day and age CSL has no excuse whatsoever but to hang their head in shame. Just how far have we come in medicine when tertiary educated persons cannot follow such a simple procedure as donning a face mask? It's far easier than having to wash one's hands! And the medical fraternity wonders why an increasing number of parents nowadays refuse to allow their children to receive innoculations to prevent very serious diseases, even free innoculations, with candy treats to follow. Methinks that CSL was not trying to make a 'batch' of serum but a 'botch' of serum. And they just may have succeeded too!

The article says that CSL's boffins are now trying to narrow the cause for the children having convulsions but what if the lax staff did something else untoward [knowingly or unwittingly] during procedure that they won't declare to the investigators? It's just as well that the FDA is on the case and more power to them in their prudence! I'm sure that we'd not have known about the so-far-disclosed extent of CSL's laxity were it not for the FDA members' acumen in carrying out very worthwhile inspections. I only wish that I had a comb with the finest set of teeth that I could present to the FDA. It certainly looks like they would know how to best implement its use in checking up on certain companies' operations.

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ILP, we've gone 'round this discussion before; the overwhelming evidence demonstrates no increase in untoward outcomes with bendictin and it's been studied in a number of ways. Thus the judge's conclusion when considering legal action against the manufacturer. While I wish that pefection were the likely and possible outcome in medicine, in most cases it is not. It is certainly true that a very, very small percentage of children will have a catestrophic reaction to routine childhood immunizations. Should we conclude, then, that immunizations should be avoided? Well that has been the conclusion of a high percentage of parents in and around the community where I live. As a result we are seeing pertusis at rates not seen in decades resulting in hospitalizations and deaths that were completely avoidable - at a far greater rate than the rare immunization reaction.

Comparing deliberate protocol violation (not wearing masks) to 18th and 19th century physicians declining to wash their hands when they didn't even have a concept of germs seems a stretch. However even today, in the 21st century, handwashing compliance is a challenge in hospitals and no doubt leads to much higher infection rates (read "The Checklist Manifesto" by Gawande)

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I took bendectine for nausea when pregnant with my daughter '81/82. She is now 29 yrs old and has fertility issues...polycystic ovary disease. I took this drug for at least 7 months due to severe nausea. Could this be her problem?

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Polycystic ovary disease is very common, occuring in up to 1/5th to even 1/3rd of women of child bearing age. Very unlikely to be related to use of bendictin when you were pregnant.

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emtridoc, a prudent judge's decision will always be predicated on only the available evidence presented, and unless that evidence is damning, the finding -- not necessarily a conclusion absolutely on the matter at hand -- will favour the defendant. Better ten guilty men go free than one innocent man be convicted etc. I've no problem with that. But as we've heard, certain pharmaceutical companies are very selective about what evidence and information they release to courts, and to the FDA. They even admit to being very selective, and have in some cases destroyed evidence, and openly admit to having done that too! They've said in some cases that it was accidental, of course. That's why, amongst all the shredding that's gone on, there's rarely a shred of evidence to stand up in court against them.

Regarding children who've not been immunized. What percentage of them not only don't contract that targeted disease, but don't suffer in any way whatsoever? Should they and their parents be denigrated for not have taken part in something that they've now proved was not necessary for them? Surely all dissenters don't all succumb. Now if they turn out to be only carriers of the disease, then they didn't need to be immunized for their own concerns*[More on those persons focused on their own concerns later]. We don't get to hear these figures being promulgated on a regular basis. Unless all statistics are taken into account then a comprehensive disclosure can never be made, and all quoted figures are only mere guesswork at best.

All the 'checklists' in the world aren't beneficial unless they are followed 24/7. Gawande's team surveyed the doctors who used the 'checklist'. 80% said that it was something that they wanted to continue using but 20% were strongly against it and said it was a waste of their time. These same doctors were then later asked again: 'If you were to have an operation yourself, would you want the checklist to be used by the surgical team who were about to operate on you?" Amazingly[not really, in my mind] 94% said that they wanted the 'checklist' to be used! So, what does this tell us about the doctors surveyed? The figures clearly indicate that many of the doctors surveyed again suddenly changed their minds when things started getting close to home, and obviously place their own longevity above that of their own patients, it's clear-cut[pun intended]. This is the same as the well-known survey of vehicle drivers anywhere in the world, when asked just where they rate their own driving ability on a percentage scale. 80-90% of them will always rate themselves well above an average of 50%, which is an impossibility. Even when the mathematical significance of it is explained to many of them in fine detail, many of them, even the ones who are really good at math, still fail[ read: choose not] to 'get it'. They really don't care enough to want to see the futility of their own obstinance! In Australia, we have a term called, "I'm alright Jack!", meaning , "I'm ok, so any problem is yours and none of mine whatsoever." "There are none so blind as those who will not see!" The most deluded people are those who choose to ignore what they already know, and they ain't thin on the ground either. The stupid 20%*[there's that promised asterisk, just in case you missed it!] referred to above, don't realise that in their initially being strongly against using the 'checklist', they may have started to set a truculent trend where many other doctors might decide to start following the 20%ers' obstinance and decide to not use the checklist either! And before we know it, we have a situation where our doctors are 'doing away' with each other like their ain't gonna be a tomorrow for any of us unlucky enough to be scheduled for an operation. We'd have to read out the 'checklist' ourselves to the few doctors left available as they operated on us! Either that or get the 'checklist' tatooed on our chests so the surgeon could read it as he/she went about his/her work.

Regarding the 18th century physicians, I wonder if they sat down to their meals after work, or partook of intimate contact, without first washing their hands of their day's work? If they did wash their hands before eating/intimacy, then why go to such trouble? Just what would cause them to wash their hands? If they didn't ever wash their hands, then they must have been a grubby lot. How many of their wives who weren't pregnant died as a result of infection. I'll wager that the figure was very low indeed, as low as the seeming importance in the 20%* doctors' minds of their patients' lives when weighed against that of their very own!

Methinks that we all do live in a 'perfect world' simply because our fallablility as humans makes us the perfect creature for what's stored therein...and none of us need ever think about trying to wash our hands of the whole matter either!

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Beginning right NOW NOW NOW I implore anyone who wants to sincerely write about their intuitive feeling that Bendectine caused them ANY problem to NOT write in about it on this blog (bad joke for a blog because two writers "own" it and absolutely know everything in the world). This will shut them down and you will not feel bad in the process. Then the two "owners" can write to each other and not put down good
folks who truly feel that this drug might have had some bad effect on their son/daughter. Thank you.

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Hey CH, it's ok with me if people don't want to have a discourse on facts. You can go to other sites and practice intuition. Why let facts get in the way? I certainly don't claim to know everything in the world, but I present evidence from the scientific literature. To date no one has presented facts to the contrary. Lots of intuition, but none supported by the evidence.

And speaking of which, ILP, that's my point. There is a plethora of scientific literature on this topic NOT produced by pharma. Certainly history is full of people who've hidden or falsified data (like the one "landmark" study that demonstrated a link between immunizations and autisim - the author later admitted to falsifying the data, but that hasn't stopped people from believing it). As we discussed before this is why studies get peer reviewed and replicated to see if the results stand up.

As for children and immunizations, there really is no question. The data analysis is extensive and conclusive. While of course not every unimmunized child comes down with disease, just ask people who grew up in the 40's and 50's prior to the polio vaccine. It was every parent's nightmare and came too true tens of thousands of times every year. Iron lungs, permenant paralysis, and death were common. Now non-existant in the developed world. Even more benign disease like chicken pox can lead to complications and death, and certainly lots of lost time from school and work and the immunization has drammatically reduced the incidence of disease. Unfortunately more and more people a)haven't seen the consequences of these diseases in their lifetime and b) count on "herd immunity" whereby enough people are vaccinated against a particular disease such that your (or your child's) chance of exposure is very low. By 2010 enough people had skipped immunizing their children against purtussis that there was an outbreak with a case rate not seen in 55 years - > 4000 cases - including approximately a dozen (preventable) infant deaths and countless hospitalizations. The impact to society is not insignficant.

As for your contention that checklists aren't beneficial unless they are used 100% of the time, the evidence would say otherwise. The "central line" checklist saved dozens of lives when it was only being used at a few hosptials and without 100% compliance. If the checklist has been done well it is of good benefit to reduce the chance of complication each and every time it's used. Even if that number is only 25%, that's far better than zero.

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Hey Mr. Verbosity #1......how much does the pharmaceutical company that manufactured
Bendictine pay you by the word? My wife was
just interested, so I told her I would ask, but
then we would get the diatribe about blah blah
blah blah......

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Zip, zero, nada, zilch, nothing, not a cent. No connection to pharma (except as a prescriber).

Were you interested in debating any science/evidence?

Or shall we just continue with mis-information?

Don't get me wrong, hunches lead to ideas, lead to investigations, lead to evidence. Just don't ignore the evidence along the way.

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