Archived documents suggest UK knew of Primodos pregnancy test’s alleged link to deformities

The British drugs regulator is to examine new evidence about a pregnancy test used in the 1960s and 1970s which hundreds of parents believe caused serious deformities in their children, often leading to early death.

A 7,000-page cache of files discovered by a victims’ campaign group includes papers suggesting the British government knew in 1975 that the hormonal drug Primodos increased the risk of a child being born with malformations. The drug was withdrawn in 1978.

Families have believed for decades that the drug might have been responsible for serious birth defects, including missing limbs, brain damage, heart defects and spina bifida, something that has been denied by Bayer, the German pharmaceutical company which owns the manufacturer, Schering.

The drug consisted of two hormone-based tablets that detected pregnancy by inducing menstruation in women who were not pregnant.

Thirty-one files of documents about the drug were found in a state archive in Berlin by Marie Lyon, chair of the Association for Children Damaged by Hormone Pregnancy Tests, whose own daughter Sarah was born without a lower arm in 1970 after she had taken Primodos.

According to Sky News, which has investigated the files, one showed that in January 1975 Dr William Inman, then principal medical officer for the UK government, reported that women who took a hormone pregnancy test “had a five-to-one risk of giving birth to a child with malformations”.