A man seeking compensation for birth defects he believes were caused by his mother taking medication while he was in utero has won legal aid and is now able to begin a court case against the maker of the drug.

Hundreds of people in the UK claim that they were harmed when their mothers were prescribed Primodos, made in the 1970s by a company which is now a part of the Bayer AG corporation.

Peter Todd, a lawyer who specializes in injuries and deformities caused by drugs and vaccines said that he had been informed that a limited sum of money was being made available by the legal services commission. Todd said “We applied for legal aid so that we would be able to review the case and whether there was now any reasonable prospect of success.”

The legal aid grant will pay to identify a suitable expert in the field to prepare the preliminary reports, Todd was not prepared to mention how much the legal aid came to although he will have to apply for further funding if the case is to progress through a trial.

Karl Murphy, 38, was born missing several fingers and toes after his mother was given the drug while pregnant with him. Murphy said that he found a letter in his mother’s attic among a bundle of papers gathered by German journalists in the 1970s in which Schering employees expressed doubts about the safety of the drug, saying that they thought there could be harmful effects.

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I pour myself another cup of coffee and start to get very excited as I add milk and sugar to the dark essence of purified Heaven. I recently quit alcohol, and coffee and cigarettes have proved to be a life-saver. There’s a problem though: I couldn’t sleep because I kept feeling things crawling all over me, so I hopped on the computer and made myself a huge pot of the finest blend acquired from the lovely people at my local café (one of about 10 in the one block).

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