Sorry if there's already a thread about this.
There's an interesting article in the papers today: www.theguardian.com/society/2022/may/12/lack-of-drugs-for-use-in-pregnancy-resulting-in-needless-deaths-in-uk
This is hugely overdue. There was a very similar situation regarding prescribing drugs for children until quite recently. Because of the ethical issues with using children as subjects in clinical trials, most drugs weren't licensed for use in children and practitioners were therefore reluctant to prescribe them as they would not have the legal protection of using them in accordance with the licensing terms and manufacturers' recommendations.
Because there are so many drugs for which it's not known whether they're safe to use in preganancy or while breast-feeding, many treatment options are cut off for women who become ill at these times (or already have health conditions before they become pregnant). The trouble is, of course, that the only way we'll ever know whether they're safe is to give them to some patients who are pregnant or breast-feeding. And what happens to them if the drugs do turn out to be unsafe?