DES

Slaughter of the Innocent related in some detail the Stilboestrol case. The full scientific name for the drug is Diethylstilboestrol, but it is commonly known as DES in the United States. The prototype of all synthetic oestrogens (female sex hormones), it was developed in 1939, tested without adverse effects on animals for years, but then it was suddenly discovered to have caused cancer in girls whose mothers had been prescribed this "miracle drug" by their doctors during pregnancy, as DES passes through the placental barrier and can trigger a cancer in the fetus.

But why had this drug been administered to pregnant women in the first place? Doesn't every drug taken during pregnancy hold a danger? Clearly, not to the knowledge of "researchers" raised in the false belief that what they see in animals applies to man as well. And in fact they had prescribed DES to their patients for the very reason that they were pregnant: the drug was touted to insure a safe pregnancy.

After DES had turned out to be the first drug that the medical confraternity itself had recognized as being responsible for creating a new type of cancer in human beings, animal tests with DES were started all over again, and again with no results: the test animals did not develop cancer.

Dr. Robert W. Miller of the National Cancer Institute of Bethesda, Md., who in 1973 wrote the official warning hastily published by Geneva's WHO, revealed in that paper:

"Experimental animal studies: There was no correlation between the types of tumors obtained in experimental models (i.e. laboratory animals - H.R.) and types of childhood cancer."

Dr. Miller either lacked the wisdom to draw the conclusion that animal experimentation had to be discarded as tragically misleading after that, or he lacked the courage to acknowledge it, which is more likely, for he and thousands of Bethesda co-workers live from animal experiments, since they don't know any other way of doing research or, perhaps, of earning a living. In fact, all Dr. Miller had to offer in his paper was to recommend an intensification of such experiments, even though the cases he had reported had developed after a latency period of 14 to 22 years.

My final manuscript delivered to Bantam Books in September 1976 reported that at least 34 cases of DES-caused cancer had been discovered until then. It was a new type of cancer, completely unknown before. Let's see Dr. Miller's own words in his historic paper published by Geneva's WHO in 1973 under the title: "Transplacental Carcinogenesis" (genesis of cancer across the placenta - H.R.):

Less than 6 months ago the dramatic announcement was made that cancer could be induced in the child by a drug that the mother had taken during pregnancy. Never before had such an occurrence been observed. A particular form of vaginal cancer (clear-cell adenocarcinoma), a disease of the elderly, was reported in 8 young women in the Boston area...

Already in 1973, in an article that had appeared in the October issue of Italy's Animali e Natura, I had reported the DES case, which had just been discovered, and indicated that in view of the long latency period, the few cases reported were bound to be just the first of many. Alas, it was an easy prophecy.

A following copyrighted paper which I [ i.e. Hans Ruesch - Ed.] published under the imprint of CIVIS , my own little information center, in Italy, was intended to warn Italy's medical world against prescribing oestrogens to pregnant women. It was sent to all Italian newspapers and periodicals, but went unheeded. Only one weekly, Panorama, acknowledged receipt. But the columns continued to be filled by science writers whose medical knowledge was stuck in the last century. So Italian doctors kept prescribing carcinogenic oestrogens to gullible patients almost two years longer than necessary, before Italy's "official" medical world awoke to reality. But many doctors haven't awakened yet.

Speaking of criminal negligence in this case seems to me hardly exaggerated in view of the facts that have surfaced since then.

In the USA, the news became public knowledge on April 4, 1978 with a United Press International dispatch from Newark, which appeared in the N.Y. Times as an inconspicuous little item with the title:

"A Cancer Victim Settles With DES Manufacturer"

A New Jersey drug concern that manufactured a hormone used to prevent miscarriages agreed today to pay financial damages to a woman who developed cancer after her mother took the drug, commonly known as DES.

The concern, Carnrick Laboratories of Cedar Knolls, made an out-of-court settlement calling for payments of an undisclosed amount to Catherine Conway Kershaw of Wilmington, Del.

The agreement came shortly before a civil grand jury was scheduled to begin deliberations in the case in the Federal District Court. As part II of the settlement, both sides agreed not to disclose the amount involved or other aspects of the case.

It was one of the first settlements in the country involving lawsuits brought against drug concerns that manufactured diethylstilbestrol, or DES.

Mrs. Kershaw and her mother filed the lawsuit, charging that Mrs. Kershaw developed cancer as a result of her mother's taking the drug 25 years ago after she was plagued by a series of unexplained miscarriages.

DES is now known to have caused vaginal cancer in a small number of women whose mother took the drug.

Note UPI's concern with minimizing the event in its closing line. But the case kept growing, inexorably, like a cancer under official medical care. Since then, the disclosed cases have been multiplying, and DES victims or their survivors have banded together to sue the manufacturers. The August issue of Mother Jones published a Letter-to-the-Editor from Margot Gramer of New York City who identified herself as "a DES daughter and an active participant in the New York-based organization DES-Action" and included the following statement:

... The number of cases is double that mentioned in the article -closer to 400 - and the number of deaths reported far surpasses ten. Furthermore, up to 90 percent of DES daughters have an 'abnormal-benign' condition known as vaginal adenosis, or some other irregularity of the reproductive system. Approximately six million women were given DES during pregnancy, so the number of DES daughters is estimated at approximately half that number. Since the oldest DES daughters are in their 30s, it is impossible to predict the outcome of those women's presently benign condition...

Meanwhile the DES-caused cancers were marching on, and thanks to the DES action groups, the Establishment press was no longer able to ignore or minimize them.

The N.Y. Times of July 17, 1979 had an article titled "Woman Wins Suit In DES Case" which began:

In a groundbreaking verdict rendered yesterday in the State Supre-me Court in the Bronx, a jury decided that a pharmaceutical company must pay $500,000 in damages to a woman for cancer caused by DES, a drug given to her mother to prevent miscarriages...

The plaintiff was identified as Joyce Bichler, a 25-years old social worker, and the manufacturer sentenced to pay up was Ely Lilly & Co.

On August 26, 1979, another article in the N.Y. Times was titled "A Woman Who Said DES Caused a Cancer Is Awarded $800,000." The woman: 26-year old Anne Needham. The manufacturer liable for the damage, White Laboratories of Kenilworth, N.J., was meanwhile taken over by Schering-Plough Corporation. The article concluded:

During the trial, Mr. Charfoos (the plaintiffs attorney - H.R.) said some 400 women had developed vaginal cancer because their mothers took the drug and that at least 1,000 other female offspring were in pre-cancerous condition.

While cancer marches on in all the countries whose obtuse, herd populations allow themselves to be dominated by the Medical Power and the Chemical industry, one question still begs for an answer: Why are the drug manufacturers being tried by civil courts and not, as should certainly be the case, by criminal courts? Under the indictment of mass murder. The explanation is in the following parts.

Time Magazine had another DES daughters article in its March 24, 1980 issue, which read in part:

Now there is more unsettling news for DES daughters. When they reach childbearing age, they appear to be more vulnerable than others to miscarriage - as well as to stillbirth, premature birth and ectopic pregnancy (in which the fetus grows outside the uterus).

The New England Journal of Medicine and other medical publications gave more news and all of it was bad. Damage from DES can extend to the third generation, and also affect the genital organs of the male offspring.

P.S. DES is still on the market - as a "morning-after" contraception pill. Ironically, the exact opposite of its original intent.