Diclegis your own Bendectin

Thirty years ago the pharmaceutical giant Merrill-Dow did the world a favor by taking Bendectin off the shelves.  Now Bendectin is returning under a different name, Diclegis; just as Blackwater became Xe became Academi, you can now sleep much safer in your beds at night, unless you might suffer from morning sickness.

As a doctor informs us, nothing better has been developed over the last thirty years, so let’s try this again!

There’s nothing wrong with the idea of getting rid of morning sickness.  And there’s nothing wrong with Bendectin’s main components – vitamins.  But there must be a reason Merrill-Dow stopped producing something that millions and millions of people bought.

Excessive cost of litigation.  As Daubert v. Merrill Pharmaceuticals (Ct. of Appeals, as opposed to the preceding Supreme Court case) tells us, more than seventeen million women used Bendectin between 1957 and 1982.  Bendectin had a habit of causing increased abnormalities in the children of the mothers that consumed it.  This isn’t a definite, because none of us are perfect, and some children are born with defects.  But the scientific method tells us to look at things and say “hey, I notice a pattern here!”

A doctor may well be right in saying that in the past thirty years we have come up with no better idea than Bendectin.  But that isn’t a justification for returning the sale of Bendectin.

Merrill-Dow, or whichever company the FDA has now approved to sell Diclegis, must operate under the same assumption as Blackwater, which found that a name change was necessary.

Before you begin to Diclegis yourself, though, the doctors have good advice:

Doctors advise trying some other steps before turning to medication for morning sickness: “Eat protein snacks before bed. Nibble crackers or sip ginger ale before getting out of bed. Eat frequent small meals. Avoid nausea-triggering odors.  When that doesn’t work, vitamin B6 alone helps some women. His next step is the B6-and-antihistamine combination that will form Diclegis. A next-step option includes the drug Zofran, normally used to treat nausea from cancer therapy.”