Poppyred85 The point I was trying to make with Primodos, is that it's yet another example of where exposure to synthetic hormones caused serious foetal harm. Yes, as with DES and thalidomide, the government went in completely on the side of the pharmaceutical industry, no one was ever prosecuted, the official line was that there was no proof that it caused deformities, and the whole thing was quickly swept under the carpet. There were no studies, as soon as talk of a possible link to deformities started appearing in the news, Bayer pulled it off the market and either destroyed the remaining stocks or shipped them off to third world countries. Nonetheless, I went to their AGM a couple of years ago, and they are real people, not just statistics, parents who've spent their entire lives having to look after severely disabled children with no help or even an acknowledgement of their plight from the government.
Another group I've come across whose lives have been ruined by prenatal exposure to synthetic hormones are Hhorages France. There, the main gripe they have is that many of their hormone exposed kids have ended up committing suicide or developing serious mental illnesses. Unfortunately their website is in French and my foreign language skills are pretty much nonexistent, but I found a paper they published in 2012 which is in English:
www.intechopen.com/books/state-of-the-art-of-therapeutic-endocrinology/behavioral-and-somatic-disorders-in-children-exposed-in-utero-to-synthetic-hormones-a-testimony-case
"As of today (April 2012), we are receiving an ever-increasing number of testimonies, the total number of testimonies collected by HHORAGES is 1,223, which represents 2,674 children from them 409 unexposed, 1,676 children exposed to synthetic hormones after medical prescriptions and 589 (post-DES) born after a previous exposure from which 20 presented psychiatric and/or somatic disorders. Amongst this total amount of 1,676 exposed children, 1,549 children are affected: 916 present psychiatric disorders, 418 somatic plus psychiatric disorders, 183 somatic disorders, 126 exposed are non affected. In addition, we numbered 48 suicides and 128 series of suicide attempts. "
Among boys, the somatic disorders they refer to are broken down into: Hypospadias, Cryptorchidism, Micropenis, Sterility, Azoospermia, Abnormal sperm, and cancer. Among girls, they are: Uterine malformations, Sterility, Miscarriages, Ectopic pregnancies, Ovarian cysts, Endometriosis, and cancer. Basically all the same physical problems the members of our Facebook group have had to deal with.
One other thing that paper touches on, is the fact that there are third generation effects associated with synthetic hormone exposure. Many of the effects seem to be able to propagate through more than one generation, so even though you yourself may have been relatively unaffected by a prenatal exposure to synthetic hormones, your children could be affected. Perhaps this at least partly accounts for why gender clinics in the UK are being overwhelmed by new referrals.
Another particularly troubling third generation effect is the link to autism in the grandchildren. I haven't actually asked the group as a whole how many have children with autism, but I know from what they've said when talking about their families that several at least do. My facebook friend Jill Escher has set up a charity to try to highlight this particular issue. There was no history of autism in her family, she did everything right during her pregnancies with her two children (which appeared to go normally and didn't require any special medical intervention). Nonetheless, she now has two children with severe, nonverbal autism. Then by chance she happened to obtain copies of the medical records from when her mother was pregnant with her, and discovered that her mother had been given a cocktail of high dose progestins and corticosteroids for most of the pregnancy.
This link is to an interview on Jill's website with Dr June Reinisch, a world renowned psychologist who has spent much of her career studying the effects of prenatal exposure to pharmaceutical hormones on peoples later psychology and behaviour. However I recommend having a look through the whole thing, particularly if you were thinking of taking Makena or some similar progestin-based treatment during your pregnancy.
www.germlineexposures.org/reinisch-qa.html