DES Daughters: Banned Pregnancy Drug Linked to Infertility, Prematurity and Cancer

In the late 1960s, a cluster of teen girls and young women showed up at Massachusetts General Hospital and were diagnosed with a rare vaginal cancer, clear cell adenocarcinoma. It's unusual even when it's diagnosed in elderly women, but it was completely out of context in twentysomethings.


One woman, the mother of one of the affected girls, asked whether it could be connected to the drug she took in early pregnancy. That drug was DES, or diethylstilbestrol, which was widely prescribed in the U.S. beginning in 1940 to help stave off miscarriage — until 1971, when the U.S. Food and Drug Administration decided that the drug doesn't work and that it causes cancer.  Full Read

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