This has been spun (typical guardian) as some sort of feminist issue, as if Doctors don’t care about finding drugs for pregnant women.
It even says how few pregnant women are included in medical trials like they’ve been excluded by nasty misogyinists.
But it’s obviously because they are ultra high risk and it is very difficult to do research on drugs and pregnant women?
What do they expect? Would you want to enter into a drug trial if you were pregnant?
Not saying more research shouldn’t be done, but fucking hell how do people expect them to magic up drugs safe for pregnant women?
Well done The Guardian for linking to the source report, it’s a shame it’s a 404 though…
I changed my epilepsy meds from sodium valproate to levetiracetam years before I had my daughter, and even then they were umming and erring whether my new med would be safe. Luckily I had an epilepsy midwife who wouldn’t hear of me having to come off them as my having a seizure was a greater risk – still took a visit to the epileptologist in 2nd trimester, and I wasn’t allowed to collect colostrum before the birth – the war of ‘you must breastfeed zomg’ and ‘onoz your essential meds might go into the baby’ was raging in the maternity ward…
Even gaviscon has a ‘yeah probs don’t take this if you’re pregnant’ on it, despite being recommended for heartburn in pregnancy.
A related issue to this is women being refused certain medications which are unsafe during pregnancy (or not known to be safe) even if you tell them you have no intention of getting pregnant. This especially happens with epilepsy medications
4 comments
This has been spun (typical guardian) as some sort of feminist issue, as if Doctors don’t care about finding drugs for pregnant women.
It even says how few pregnant women are included in medical trials like they’ve been excluded by nasty misogyinists.
But it’s obviously because they are ultra high risk and it is very difficult to do research on drugs and pregnant women?
What do they expect? Would you want to enter into a drug trial if you were pregnant?
Not saying more research shouldn’t be done, but fucking hell how do people expect them to magic up drugs safe for pregnant women?
Well done The Guardian for linking to the source report, it’s a shame it’s a 404 though…
I changed my epilepsy meds from sodium valproate to levetiracetam years before I had my daughter, and even then they were umming and erring whether my new med would be safe. Luckily I had an epilepsy midwife who wouldn’t hear of me having to come off them as my having a seizure was a greater risk – still took a visit to the epileptologist in 2nd trimester, and I wasn’t allowed to collect colostrum before the birth – the war of ‘you must breastfeed zomg’ and ‘onoz your essential meds might go into the baby’ was raging in the maternity ward…
Even gaviscon has a ‘yeah probs don’t take this if you’re pregnant’ on it, despite being recommended for heartburn in pregnancy.
A related issue to this is women being refused certain medications which are unsafe during pregnancy (or not known to be safe) even if you tell them you have no intention of getting pregnant. This especially happens with epilepsy medications