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   HebrideanHecate (hebrideanhecate@spinster.xyz)'s status on Monday, 05-Feb-2024 01:38:01 JST HebrideanHecate

   https://archive.ph/UReg5

   Ministers must begin paying compensation to the families of children disabled by the epilepsy drug sodium valproate by next year, a report will say this week. The report’s author, Dr Henrietta Hughes, England’s patient safety commissioner, says valproate is “a bigger scandal than thalidomide, in terms of the numbers of people affected”. She will back calls for financial redress for the thousands of children left physically and mentally disabled. Every month, three babies are still being born who have been exposed to the drug.

   As many as 20,000 babies in the UK may have been harmed by valproate since it was licensed in the 1970s. Risks about its effect on babies were intentionally withheld from women by regulators. Many were told it was safe, when about 40 per cent of babies who were exposed were left disabled.