Health: Hormone Pregnancy Tests

Lord Winston Excerpts

Thursday 21st January 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Prior of Brampton]

I understand that all the relevant documents are being made available to the expert working group. The chair of the association looking after the children who have been damaged by these pregnancies is an observer on that committee.

[Lord Winston (Lab)]

My Lords, with deference to my noble friend’s Question, is it not a fact that 40 years on—it is actually more than 40 years because the last letter in the British Medical Journal was in 1977 on things that had happened previously—it is now really impossible to decide the precise nature of what happened after the dosage of Primodos? While an inquiry might be helpful to some people, it is very unlikely that we will uncover anything that will be really useful in the future. Is not the message to pregnant women that they are not advised to take any kind of drug during pregnancy?

[Lord Prior of Brampton]

My Lords, the noble Lord is clearly an expert in this field. If the advice is that pregnant women should not take any kind of drug during pregnancy, that must be the right advice. I agree with him that many of these documents go right back to the early 1950s and many are in German rather than English. The quantity of documentation is enormous. That is one reason why this review has taken so long. However, the people on the expert working group are very distinguished clinicians and are doing the best they can in very difficult circumstances.