A landmark UK legal case by families of disabled children disabilities against a pharmaceutical giant is likely to be abandoned after legal aid was withdrawn.
The families say Sanofi-aventis, manufacturers of anti-epilepsy drug Epilim, taken by mothers while pregnant, should pay compensation because their children's conditions resulted from the medication.
But the government's Legal Services Commission, which is believed to have provided more than £3m to help the families prepare for the action, decided to end its financial support just three weeks before hearings were due to begin in the high court in London.
via guardian.co.uk
1 comment:
Epilim is sodium valproate (valproic acid).
It has been known for decades that valproate causes birth defects and more recently that it is the worst drug for causing birth defects including mental retardation among all the anticonvulsants.
In 1988 or 89 the American Society of Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics awared the best paper of the year to a group that elucidated the mechanism as being due to metabolism to a reactive epoxide metabolite. In this paper they warned that since anticonvulsants cross the BBB that any that are metabolize to an epoxide need to be evaluated for birth defects and mental retardation in particular.
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