Pregnancy drug defects case rejected

A BID by families seeking compensation for birth defects they believe were caused by a pregnancy test drug has been struck out by the High Court.

Primodos, a hormone-based pregnancy test, was introduced in the UK in the 1950s, and up to a million women are believed to have used it before it was withdrawn in 1978 over safety fears.

A group of 172 claimants sought compensation for harms they said were caused by this and another drug called Amenorone Forte after a previous legal bid failed in 1982.

But Mrs Justice Yip ruled there is still not enough evidence to link harm to foetuses in the womb to the tests. She said: ‘As would be expected, there have been significant developments in all relevant scientific fields in the past 40 years, but there is nothing [a claimant] can identify to demonstrate he has any real prospect of overcoming the evidential hurdles that prevented his claim from proceeding to trial in 1982.’