§ Mr. Onslowasked the Secretary of State for Social Services what representations he has received concerning the refusal of the Committee on Safety of Medicines to inform mothers who are known to the Committee to have taken a hormonal pregnancy test during pregnancy that any claim for compensation for resultant congenital damage to their children must be lodged before 25th May 1978; and what reason the Committee has given him for the refusal.
§ Mr. MoyleThe Committee on Safety of Medicines was asked by a community health council whether it would be prepared to notify mothers identified in a study of congenital abnormality and maternal drug use as having been given a hormone pregnancy test of the existence of the Association for Children Damaged by Hormone Pregnancy Tests. The committee has always undertaken its studies of adverse reactions to drugs on the basis of strict confidentiality to protect participants and ensure continuing co-operation with its work, and it felt that it could not use confidential information for the purpose proposed. I have received no representations.
The results of the committee's study of a selected sample of mothers must not be misinterpreted to give the false impression that any mother can be identified as having given birth to an abnormal child as a result of a hormonal pregnancy test. While a marginal increase was shown in the kind of abnormalities which occur spontaneously, no specific abnormalities were found which could aid the establishment of cause-and-effect relationships in individual cases.