Experts ‘complicit’ over drug that caused disabilities

♦ Medical experts were “complicit” in allowing thousands of children to suffer deformity after resisting warnings on epilepsy drugs, campaigners said yesterday.

A hearing heard regulators knew in 1973 that taking sodium valproate in pregnancy could cause babies to be born with disabilities, but waited 40 years to alert the public.

Manufacturer Sanofi has said it has always been transparent about the medicine’s risks. But Joanne Cozens, chairman of the Organisation for Anti-convulsant Syndromes, told the European Medicines Agency in London: “Sanofi have a loyal bunch of clinical experts promoting valproate and resisting warnings. I can see a few in the room today. We don’t trust you any more because you are complicit in avoidable injury to children.”