This call between Murphy and Janet Williams was the start of an incredible partnership. It led to the report published this month by England’s patient safety commissioner, Dr Henrietta Hughes, which recommended a compensation scheme for families of children harmed by valproate taken in pregnancy. Hughes has suggested initial payments of £100,000 and described the damage caused by the drug as “a bigger scandal than thalidomide”. It is estimated that 20,000 British children have been exposed to the drug while in the womb.
Williams and Murphy have campaigned relentlessly to reach this point. It is by no means the endpoint – even now, an estimated three babies are born each month having been exposed to the drug. Together, the women formed In-Fact (the Independent Fetal Anti Convulsant Trust) to find and support families like theirs. They were instrumental in the creation of an all-party parliamentary group to raise awareness in government. They went to Geneva to get foetal valproate spectrum disorder (FVSD) included in the latest version of the World Health Organization’s International Classification of Diseases.
Perhaps most crucially, they uncovered papers from the early 1970s that revealed the key decisions that informed how the drug would be prescribed. They found notes from the manufacturer, Sanofi, that stated that valproate could be teratogenic – harmful to foetuses. They also found the response from the Committee on Safety of Medicines (CSM), then the main decision-making body on new medicines, which concluded that the risk was low and that patients should not be informed, in order to avoid “fruitless anxiety”.
