Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, March 12, 1990                   TAG: 9003122785
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                 LENGTH: Medium

FAMILY BLAMES GIRL'S DEATH ON DRUG GRANDMOTHER TOOK

Sarah Roberts of Olney, Md., whose daughter Amy died last June, said a lawyer representing the family plans to file a suit in U.S. District Court here today against Eli Lilly and Co. of Indianapolis, one of the manufacturers of the synthetic hormone diethylstilbestrol, known as DES.

Sarah Roberts said her mother-in-law, who is still living and has one other young granddaughter, took the drug in 1949 when she was pregnant with J. David Roberts, Amy's father, now a Methodist minister in Olney.

The case raises the possibility that a danger already recognized for the daughters of 3 million women who took DES during pregnancy from the 1940s to the 1970s may affect another generation of children.

DES was made and sold by some 300 pharmaceutical companies from 1947 to 1971. In 1970 researchers discovered the link between DES and cancer in daughters of women who used the drug.

The Food and Drug Administration says the drug is still manufactured for some medical uses but is banned from use during pregnancy.

"Amy had no symptoms until she came home from school on a Thursday complaining of a pain in the back of her neck," Sarah Roberts said in a telephone interview. A week later, she said, doctors said her daughter had only three months to live.

That was two years ago. Amy died last June, after doctors fought for 14 months to control the rare cancer, which spread through her body, Roberts said.

"We are hoping to alert other DES sons and daughter that there is a possibility of cancer and that maybe their daughters should be checked," said Roberts. She said doctors told her Amy might have lived after surgery if the cancer had been detected earlier.

Roberts said the first indication of a problem may have been when Amy began menstruation at the early age of 9, but a pediatrician told her nothing was wrong.

Dr. Herbert Kotz of Olney, who talked about the case only after it was reported by The Washington Post on Sunday, said he and three other doctors were preparing an article on it for submission to a medical journal.

Kotz said the article will deal with the possibility that the effects of DES may be passed beyond one generation. But he said it will also note that the same cancer has been found in several young women who had no exposure to DES in their family histories and Amy's case could have occurred by chance.

He said the cancer is found among older women and has almost never been linked to DES in a woman who showed the first symptoms after age 30.