Medicines and Medical Devices Safety Review

Those whose lives have been forever changed by the drug Primodos will be very disappointed today, despite there being a step in the right direction. Asking Lord O’Shaughnessy to drive forward the recommendations of the expert working group will not bring any confidence. That expert working group changed its terms of reference: it was asked to examine whether a possible association exists between Primodos and birth defects and it did not do that; it looked at a causal association. That is the crux of the problem, and that is what makes that working group’s findings unacceptable, aside from the fact that the scientific evidence not included existed before it even started its investigation. Unless these factors are taken into account in a wide-ranging independent inquiry, I doubt those victims will ever get the satisfaction and justice they deserve.