Australia; NSW
Australia and the UK need to improve surveillance of drugs that were previously approved but are no longer in use, and ongoing care offered to people exposed, according to an editorial comment by Aussie authors. They look at the impact of a synthetic oestrogen drug called diethylstilboestrol (DES), which was used in the UK and Australia to prevent miscarriage from the 1940's to the 1970's before it was found to cause cancer in young women, among other multigenerational complications. The authors highlight that if a similar drug disaster occurred now, computerised health records would make it considerably easier to find and inform those affected, but even today there are gaps in the way regulators approve new cancer drugs, often without randomised controlled trials and based on surrogate outcomes.
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