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

DATE: MONDAY, March 12, 1990                   TAG: 9003123026
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A/6   EDITION: EVENING 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                 LENGTH: Medium

DRUG'S DEADLY SPREAD IN FAMILY TREE ALLEGED

Sarah Roberts of suburban Olney, Md., whose daughter Amy died last year, said a lawyer representing the family was filing suit today against Eli Lilly and Co. of Indianapolis, which manufactured the synthetic hormone diethylstilbestrol, or DES.

A Lilly spokesman did not return a telephone call seeking comment.

The Food and Drug Administration banned the drug from use by pregnant women in the early 1970s after it had been used by an estimated 3 million women over three decades in the belief that it would prevent miscarriages.

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.

Don McLearn, an FDA spokesman, said Amy Roberts' case was the first he had heard of a genetic defect that may be related to DES possibly being passed to a grandchild. In Amy's case, the gene would have come through her father.

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 Amy's father, the Rev. J. David Roberts, a Methodist minister in Olney.

She said two of her husband's sisters have had medical problems which they blame on the drug their mother took. Two grandchildren died after being born prematurely, she said.

The FDA says the drug is still manufactured for some medical applications 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," her mother said in a telephone interview. A week later, she said, doctors had discovered cancer in Amy's vagina and lungs and told the Roberts their daughter had only three months to live.

Amy died last June, after doctors fought for 14 months to control the rare cancer, which spread through her body, Sarah Roberts said. "We are hoping to alert other DES sons and daughters that there is a possibility of cancer and that maybe their daughters should be checked," she said.

Dr. Herbert Kotz of Olney, who talked about the case only after it was reported by The Washington Post on Sunday, said he was preparing an article on the matter. He said he is exploring the possibility that the effects of DES may be passed beyond one generation.