It has been prescribed since 1978 and reports of the ingredient sodium valproate causing birth defects such as spina bifida go back almost as far. FACS is believed to have affected up to 20,000 babies – ten times more than Thalidomide.
FACS is, Dr Turnpenny points out, less dramatic than the missing and distorted limbs caused by Thalidomide, but the neurological effects are far worse. ‘About ten per cent of foetuses exposed to sodium valproate will have a major congenital malformation such as cleft palate. Twelve per cent are likely to be diagnosed with a neuro-developmental disorder.’




In what may be a ground-breaking decision, the Italian Court of Rimini has ruled that causation between an MMR vaccine and the resulting autism in a young child “has been established.”
Police say men planned to target Barack Obama’s election headquarters but lawyers claim evidence was planted.
Sometimes it doesn't pay to do the right thing. Just ask John Chevilott, a former public-works employee in Wayne County, Mich., who earlier this month found a loaded, snubnosed revolver while mowing grass in Detroit's Brightmoor neighborhood, turned it in and was promptly fired.





























