Mums v Big Pharma

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IT WAS back in 2010 when the Morning Star first covered the collapse of a landmark legal case brought by mothers against pharmaceutical giant Sanofi-Aventis. They were seeking compensation from the manufacturers of anti-epilepsy drug Epilim, taken by the mothers during pregnancy, because the sodium valproate it contained caused birth defects in their children.

Many of the children live with a range of physical and developmental issues such as skull and facial malformations, heart defects, cleft lip, spina bifida, delayed speech and learning difficulties. A victory could have seen Sanofi paying out tens of millions of pounds in compensation to affected families for the lifelong harm caused by the medication.

But the mothers were forced to drop their case after legal aid was withdrawn. The reason? They were deemed to have less than a 50 per cent chance of winning.

Their brave fight for justice seemed to be over. But they refused to give up, and here we are at the end of 2026 with a new BBC documentary, Mums v Big Pharma, which introduces Janet Williams, 62, and Emma Murphy, 45, whose tenacious campaigning over the years has frequently been featured in these pages.

Made by the team behind Mr Bates vs The Post Office, the film candidly follows the two women, their husbands and their children, and contains heartbreaking footage of their decades-long struggle, alongside frank interviews with the families.

“We’re fighting a cause that’s one of the biggest medical scandals this country has ever seen,” says Emma, who lives in Salford with husband Joe and their five affected children aged from 17 to 23.

“They have had 53 years. We will keep coming back until these children get the justice they deserve.”

Sanofi had evidence sodium valproate caused malformations in animal foetuses in 1974, the documentary highlights, but the drug still received a full licence for use in the UK. By the 1990s sodium valproate was one of the most widely prescribed anti-epileptic drugs in the country. In 2004 Sanofi had an annual turnover of £200m from sodium valproate and by the mid-2000s about 50,000 women in Britain were taking it daily.

At least 20,000 children are thought to have been affected by the drug in Britain since the 1970s. 

Both Janet and Emma have argued that they were denied the right to make an informed decision about taking the drug as they weren’t warned of the risks by healthcare professionals, and that drug safety information was inadequate. 

In one scene Janet, who lives near Blackpool, with husband Steve, 65, and children Lee, 36, and Philip, 34, produces a letter from a specialist dated March 30 1993 that marked the first time she was told that her children’s birth defects were caused by Epilim. It’s incredible to think that since they were first told 33 years ago they have still not been compensated. 

But it’s what Janet and Emma discovered in the national archives in 2015 that is the most explosive evidence yet in support of their cause. They found a document from 1973 showing that the Committee on Safety of Medicines regulators knew sodium valproate could cause birth defects but chose to withhold warnings from patients in case it led to “fruitless anxiety.”

This stark paternalism denied women’s autonomy and was a smoking gun that shifted the blame directly onto the government and regulators.

England’s patient safety commissioner Professor Henrietta Hughes has called it “a bigger scandal than thalidomide.” She carried out a government-ordered review into valproate, which in 2024 recommended a compensation scheme for families of children affected. Yet there is still no sign of one.

Janet and Emma have written to Prime Minister Andy Burnham requesting a meeting but have had no reply.

The Department of Health and Social Care said: “Women put their trust in the system and were badly let down.

“Significant changes have already been made to the role of the medicines regulator since these failings were exposed and they are now better equipped to act quickly when safety concerns are raised.”

Sanofi called sodium valproate an essential medicine for serious conditions, supplied under strict regulatory supervision. The company said it gave information to regulators and that guidance to clinicians and patients has reflected the evolution of scientific knowledge.

Speaking on the next stage of their campaign, Janet says: “We have achieved a lot during this campaign over the years.

“But there’s still a big one for us and that’s to get redress, and compensation for the children affected because they’ve been disabled in so many ways. They need so much support.”

But it’s her son Philip who has the final word: “I just want to say that I’m really proud of my mum and Emma for just carrying on with the campaign.

“In my eyes it’s not their fault. It’s the government’s fault.

“In a way it’s gross negligence for them to not tell my mum and Emma about what these drugs can do and how much harm they can actually do to children like me.”

One of the film’s strengths is its use of animation by the Tin Bear Project. It serves partly as a device to keep viewers abreast of the case’s long, dense history, and partly to help visualise what these resilient mums have been through. There’s one animation that shows Janet and Emma enter a room full of towering men in suits, representing the pharmaceutical giants and other healthcare executives, who peer down at them in a clever visual nod to their David and Goliath battle.

Janet describes the neurologist who first prescribed her the drug as a dinosaur. In another animation she asks him to take her off it, and he refuses without looking up from his papers, before transforming into one.

Unlike the Post Office scandal, which needed a drama to move a government to action, this documentary has no actors to lean on.

But the harrowing experiences of these two women and their families are enough to highlight a scandal that is no less devastating. And it leaves the viewer with no doubt: the government must act.

Mums v Big Pharma airs on BBC Two on Monday November 9

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