• 01
  • December
    2011

Judge Marianne Bowler has set a deadline for the Daubert hearing testimonies on December 19, 2011 in the diethylstilbestrol breast cancer case of Fecho v. Eli Lilly, et al. All expert testimonies in the District Court of Massachusetts will end at that time.  Plaintiffs' experts supporting the causal association between prenatal DES exposure and the substantially increased risk of breast cancer have already all testified before the Court.  After the Daubert hearing ends, the Judge will likely decide in February of 2012 at the soonest regarding whether or not Plaintiffs' experts will be allowed to testify at trial. 

During the Daubert hearing on November 21, 2011, Dr. Hans-Olov Adami, Plaintiffs' expert epidemiologist from the Harvard School of Public Health, testified to the recent findings in the Hoover 2011 article that appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Dr. Adami explained that those DES daughters who exhibited vaginal epithelial changes (VEC), such as adenosis or metaplastic squamous epithelium, are at significant risk for breast cancer.  The Hoover 2011 study found that those DES daughters who exhibited VEC, a biomarker for high dose and early exposure, were at a 2.21 times, or 121% higher risk of breast cancer than the unexposed. Dr. Adami stated: "What is striking here is that when they do a trend test, you see unexposed, lowly exposed with no VEC and highly exposed with VEC. The P value for trend is .01, which is highly significant. It meets very high criteria for excluding the play of chance."  In addition, Dr. Adami re-affirmed that the breast cancer risk from prenatal DES exposure is modified by age, where the cancer risk is more than doubled when DES daughters reach the age of 40 and tripled after the age of 50. 

The Plaintiffs' case is rocketing ahead with great momentum.  Please check back for more updates in the coming weeks. 

If you have questions about the ongoing DES breast cancer litigation or your eligibility to join, please contact us. We would be happy to help answer your inquiries.