Bendectin And Birth Defects (Page 20) (Top voted first)

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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REPORT

In the most comprehensive study of its kind in the world, the University of Adelaide, South Australia has identified the higher risk of major birth defects from Assisted Reproduction. The results are being published May 5 in the New England Journal of Medicine, and presented in Barcelona, Spain, at the World Congress on Building Consensus in Gynecology, Infertility and Perinatology.

An article, in "ScienceDaily", mentions that there is much concern with women using "clomiphene citrate"[now very widely available at low cost] to stimulate ovulation as its use -- outside of a closely supervised clinical setting -- is said to triple the risk of fetal malformations.

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I also took it for 2 of my babies the fisrt is fine but my youngest daughter was born with an eye problem. I offend wonder if Benedictin was the reason. Nobody seems to be able to get an straight answers but side effects.

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Emtridoc, Albert Einstein said: "If we knew what we were doing there'd be no need to call it research."

My feeling in respect of as to whether the trialled trio of Bendectin/Debendox/Diclectin have caused any teratogenicity goes functionally further than just glibly saying that "the jury is still out". Methinks that (just like you quizzically quipped in your #340 post with: "More research to come?"), they've not yet even been embryologically-empanelled. Shades of: "Seek and ye shall f_ind'icators."

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I took this drug in 1972, my son has a problem with reality and it effect his employment, he has expectations and if the company is not meeting them he quits. Therefore he can’t keep a job for more than 2 years. Emotional wise, he is at a stage one maturity level and cannot get beyond that. We are all to blame for his problems, he cannot handle money and has three kids by 2 woman. My Grandchildren seem fine they all have their body parts and seem healthy, I hope they can mature beyond the age of 15 years.

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I AGREE!!!!!!

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my mother took this drug for morning sickness. I was born in 1983. I have a cleft palet and cleft lip. My docters did an amazing job on me you can barley tell. My mom and dad filed a lawsuit but it ended up getting dropped. Thought i would share

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Vivian, the name of your daughter's eye deformity may be called "Coloboma". If you wish to Google - Coloboma: Humans With "Cat Eyes" - you'll find a very well-written story [with pictures and many comments] by Kimberly Crandell, who has coloboma. Kimberly grew up in Colorado but hankers to live in Seattle, for the cool and overcast days. Children born with coloboma are checked[their parents should be checked too!] for symptoms of certain syndromes known to include coloboma, such as CHARGE, a rare condition that stands for:

C - coloboma
H - heart defects
A - atresia of the choanae (problems with the nose passages)
R - retarded growth and developments
G - genital hypoplasia (undescended testicles)
E - ear abnormalities

billy g, thanks for posting your story and I'm glad to hear that your doctors did you proud. Well done!

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born 1962 mom took this i suffer from degenerative bone disease ptsd depression anxiety and have a number of people in my ge group suffering with same problems all related too this drug i belive

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Most of the following is from "The Australian" newspaper July 18, 2012.

Distributors of the drug thalidomide have agreed to pay a multi-million dollar settlement to a Victorian woman who was born without legs or arms after her mother took the anti-nausea medication.

The multi-million dollar compensation payment to Lynette Rowe, 50, will provide her with care for the rest of her life, her lawyers say.

Lawyers for Ms Rowe, this morning told the Victorian Supreme Court they had reached an agreement with Diageo, which distributed thalidomide in Australia in the 1950s and 1960s.

The settlement represents a major milestone for Australian thalidomide victims who will also be entitled to make a claim.

Ms Rowe had launched a class action against Diageo as well as Grunenthal, the German pharmaceutical company which manufactured thalidomide, but Grunenthal has not agreed to the settlement.

Ms Rowe wept as her father Ian spoke on her behalf.

"The things she has achieved are absolutely amazing," he told reporters on Wednesday.

"You don't need arms and legs to change the world."

Ms Rowe's lawyer Peter Gordon said that Lynette had struck a blow for "thalidomiders" all over the world.

The case has been adjourned until next year while final discussions on the settlement continue. Newspaper advertisements will run in the meantime to alert other thalidomide victims to the settlement and their chance to make a claim.

Ms Rowe's mother took thalidomide for about a month in 1961.

The case alleged Grunenthal knew of links between thalidomide and adverse health effects. It was alleged that between 1956 and 1961 the company had received reports of birth deformities in infants whose mothers had taken thalidomide but ignored, suppressed and denigrated people who complained.

The drug was withdrawn in Australia in November 1961.
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"They also serve who only stand and wait" - John Milton (1608-74)

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Emtridoc, here's a question -- be it only a rhetorical one at best, if its answer proves [for the time being anyway] too etiologically-elusive -- you might like to ponder on. Did every mother who took thalidomide[this holds for Bendectin, Debendox and Diclectin too], at any time whilst pregnant, and of course[no pun] more particularly during the "critical period", give birth to a child with even a relatively minor deformity? Not that any putatively-minor abnormality is any consolation. I'll wager that not every mum/mom did, and when we know the answer as to why they all didn't, I reckon we'll all be well on the way to not only understanding but actually believing, beyond all doubt, that pregnant women, including and never forgetting for a mothering moment their precious progeny, are, both *groups* of them, by right of prescription[again no pun], not fungible.

Their exists a danger when it comes to *grouping*[a *pattern* if you prefer] people, especially if when those in charge[read as: those who deem only themselves worthy of "calling the shots"] of such *grouping* are not being honest[read: in the know] about its intriguing intracacies. The "Texas sharpshooter fallacy(Wiki)" does explain it, but not to entirety, because I know of a slight variation on it[the fallacy] due to a ploy a very close relative of mine used during his military training just prior to WW2. He was a sharpshooter and logician[did I forget to mention prankster?] well before he enlisted, due to the fact that he'd already lived through an economic depression, and so, he'd learnt to make every shot count. During target training, he and his fellow recruits were required to start at 800 yards, fire one shot at their individual targets, run to the 700 yard mark, fire one shot again, and continue closing on their target 100 yards at a time in same fashion, finishing at the 100 yard mark. They were each provided with only 8 rounds of cartridges and told to make each shot count. My father...err...very close relative only went through the motions of firing a shot every 100 yards until he arrived at the 100 yard line where he fired his eight rounds[8 bullseyes]. From this artifice he was dubbed the nickname of "Danny", after Daniel Boone. He didn't need a can of paint like the joked-about Texan, or a brush, and he, solely because of his nous..err..marksmanship, unlike all his fellow recruits, was even excused from having to brush the skins from the many potatoes waiting those detailed to K.P. duties.
That was the deal offered by their sergeant, in that, whoever scored the highest was to be rewarded handsomely, not unlike commissions awarded those who -- sometimes with total abandon -- manage to shift pharmaceutical product from warehouses to consumers I reckon.

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My mom took this drug with my younger sister and I. I have been through years of fertility treatments and I too have a strange cervix. My younger sister has been having unprotected intercourse with her husband for years and has never been pregnant. How devastating. If this drug caused our infertility:(

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According to one of lawyer Michael Magazanik's affidavits concerning Grunenthal, the German pharmaceutical company which manufactured thalidomide [see "The Canberra Times" *The 50-year global cover-up*, 26 July 2012]:

"by May 1961, Grunenthal knew that its own medically trained staff had 'a very real fear of [thalidomide] side effects' and were refusing to use thalidomide drugs within their own families."

This renders redolent the situation when many of the doctors surveyed by surgeon Atul Gawande's team quickly changed their tune [including Gawande himself lest he branded a hypocrite] when asked if they themselves were to undergo a surgical operation, would they then want Gawande's "checklist" used for their operation. Of the doctors initially belonging to the 20% who said it was just a waste of their time in using the "checklist" when they were the surgeons about to operate on a patient, 14% of these doctors quickly changed their tune when they were asked if they themselves were to go under the knife and not just be the person wielding it. Gawande himself initially thought that because he was at Harvard he didn't need a "checklist" because his skills were bulletproof, or so he thought! It's funny [ironic] how things can quickly change a person's mind when things start getting too close to home. Like they say, "It's a nice place to visit...but I wouldn't want to live there!"

Even Grunenthal's own lawyers had their doubts all those many years ago about aspects of the company's behaviour regarding its "response" [read as: "nonchalance"] towards hundreds of reports coming in about thalidomide causing nerve damage [let alone the myriad other teratogenesis!]

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Sorry, ILP, but I'm not very clear on the question you're asking, here? Defining a "minor deformity" would be quite a challenge. Is any child born "perfect" (or perhaps better said "is any child born not perfect")? The Nazi's believed they could build a "pefect" race. There are cultures today that consider a female child imperfect and practice infanticide.
Your question is could bendictine on an individual/micro level have caused some of the effects postulated on this site. Of course I can't say no. Likewise, for individuals on a micro level I also can't say that sunlight, eating meat, caffiene, or acetaminophen might have caused some of the effects. My point is that by multiple studies looking at if from multiple different angles bendictin did not infer any greater risk of these outcomes vs. children born without exposure to the medication.

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Emtridoc, your #354 post is equivocal in that you first say that you're unclear re my question but you then later hit the nail on the head [albeit subjectively] attempting to provide an answer for it, i.e., you seem to have gathered the question's import in a judicious jot. If we can distinguish minor deformities from major ones as the minor ones being those less noticeable, or more importantly, less disabling, like say, my unilateral microtia/aural atresia [as I hear very well indeed on one side], compared to someone having no limbs at all, like Lynette Rowe, then it's not really very much of a challenge at all.

Those cultures choosing to terminate the lives of female children [on the basis that females are an imperfect creation] merely follow and puerilely perpetuate as flawed a logic and chutzpah as the children who brazenly take the life of both their parents then later complain about their now being an orphan.

Whilst you and I may not choose to state conclusively[yet] either way that Bendectin did or didn't cause any teratogenicity, there are 'thems that do', and the difficulty lies in the fact that some of these 'thems' are members of a judiciary [or others with a pecuniary interest], and are therefore obligated to [or they choose to interpret that they are] make a finding one way or the other. Methinks that, like in many a coronial inquest, these jurists may serve their communities far better -- where they're able to -- by just returning an open finding. There's not much worse than a precarious precedent's being set just for the sake of having one so.

Please remember too that I wasn't necessarily going all out in attempting to compel you to answer the question as I did at least try to couch it somewhat as being a rhetorical one that you might like to just ponder on, but full marks to you for having a stab at it.

Regarding Bendectin's multiple studies and their allegedly being looked at from myriad angles, we must never overlook the fact that there are/were just too many variables involved, not the least important of them being a paucity of records kept for each and every case of pregnancy nausea involving the antiemetic's dispensation. And of course Merrell-Dow's being deemed for quite some time now as being most averse to come completely clean with all of their own research information doesn't augur well at all for any condign resolution. For all we know, someone who works/worked for Merrell-Dow may soon reveal [even inadvertantly] some information about Bendectin and its manufacturer that will allow the many experts to look upon an informed inquiry in an entirely different and enhanced light.

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i took debondox in 1981 my son is nearly 30 and has struggled all his life with depression an bipolar and learning difficulties when he was young is this due to debondox, my 2 other boys are ok but i never took it with them. i was on it 6 months straight and he was 7 weeks early.

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Hi, I found the facebook page but it no longer seems to be manned. I have recently made my own facebook page. My mam took Debendox and i was born with my right hand missing i have 2 stumps. I would love to hear from people who have been affected by this drug. We all seem to be up against a brick wall. Needing answers and getting nothing. I have done alot of research into the drug, good and bad. Factual truth is an important element of justice. We need independant trials so that we can get factual information.
I did go to court in America in 1985 i am from the uk. My details are in the lists. Jeffrey blum v Dow is a interesting read.

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I took this drug in 1977. My son was born in 1978 with situs inversus (his organs are backwards - heart on right) and no cilia (hair like cells). He also now has a brain tumor that will grow back if removed so medication controls this. He seems like a normal 34 year old male but he does have lung issues (coughs a lot) and difficulty breathing sometimes. I think the drug caused this but I don't really know. He has fathered 2 girls (they said he couldn't because of no cilia) and they seem normal.

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Interlineal peruser.... Will you email me xxxxx@xxx {edited for privacy}
I find your passion on the subject quiet something.

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vicki, I've tried connecting with Facebook umpteen times before but every time I did I got so many prompts and such a consummate runaround that I've given it a miss. For example, I just now clicked on a Facebook link with your name emblazoned on it and it *prompt*ly came up with: "No results found for your query"! Game, set...and matchless! Speaking of which[Facebook], I heard a lovely quote from Jon Ronson when he was talking to Susan Cain on ABC Radio National's "Big Ideas" program [He and she both are gems in their own right and simply synergise in spades when together] and he said: "Facebook is where you tell lies to all your friends and Twitter is where you tell the truth to strangers". I use neither... and there "lies the truth"!

It's true that I do have a passion [relatively newfound, considering my vintage] for teratogenicity's causes, and although I do try to maintain at least some semblance of objectivity as to the etiology of teratogenicity in its myriad known forms[let alone perhaps myriad those that may yet lie presently undiscovered], I must say that I'm also an ardent fan of Gonzo journalism -- Jingoistic journalism too where one dares to make so b_old-hat -- c'OZ'[ha] it helps to maintain a much-needed balance, and we need be ever mindful of that venerable vein of the much-requisite Yin sought to mix it with the bevy of Y_angst...or the bevvy of y_Angost'ura bitterness supped in society nowadays.

It's said that it's better to judge folk by their actions and not just that which they say. This could well explain the Royal Society's motto, being: "Nullius in verba". Regarding justice, and its being sought by many folk for their own reasons, I can't say that I'm enamoured towards the word "justice" per se as being appropriately descriptive or efficacious, and from the way that I've seen putative justice meted out and failing miserably in said process, I think that in many cases[no pun], that which results from courts of law isn't justice, but just that which so-called learned folk think is acceptable to society at that particular jerry-built judicial juncture.

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Coll, regarding your son's persistent coughing due to lung problems, you may wish to inquire if he's able to try taking some anti-reflux medication to see if it's able to ease things for him, if he's not already doing so.

Congratulations all round on the 2 grand-daughters. Sometimes methinks that when medicos say that a person can't [couldn't] do something, it's more of subjectivity creeping in on the experts' part by way of perhaps "shouldn't". In your son's case, those professionals who said your son "couldn't", may now be thinking that they "shouldn't" have said it c'OZ' it's now doubly-evident that it was they who just "couldn't" deliver the goods.

I wonder if they'd now qualify as being reconditely-recognised as nescient new-age f_Ob'stetricians?

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