New York – A Manhattan jury awarded $42.3 million Friday to 11 women who had reproductive problems after their mothers took a synthetic hormone prescribed to reduce miscarriages during pregnancy.
“It’s a great victory for the women’s health movement,” said Sybil Shainwald, the lawyer who filed the lawsuits against three small drug companies that manufacture DES.
DES, or diethylstilbestrol, is a synthetic hormone manufactured by an estimated 300 drug companies and prescribed to 5 million pregnant women between 1947 and 1971. After doctors reported a link between mothers who took DES and rare clear-cell cervical and vaginal cancers in their daughters, the Food and Drug Administration barred pregnant women from using the drug in 1971. DES also has been linked to breast cancer in the mothers, infertility and other reproductive problems in their daughters, and infertility and possibly testicular cancers in their sons. The defendants, Emons Industries of York, Pa., which was known as Amfre-Grant Pharmaceutical when it made DES; Carnick Pharmaceutical; and Boyle & Co. of California, which would have to pay a percentage of the awards, say they will appeal. State Supreme Court Justice Ira Gammerman ordered the jury to assume that DES caused the plaintiffs’ health problems and to determine damages. Lawyers on both sides objected. Gammerman plans to schedule a trial next month to determine whether DES caused the problems and whether the three companies are liable.
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