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After taking part in a landmark case against the manufacturers of the synthetic hormone DES, she represented many other victims of harmful drugs and devices.
Sybil Shainwald, a lawyer who for nearly half a century represented women whose health had been irreparably and often catastrophically harmed by poorly tested drugs and medical devices, died on April 9 at her home in Manhattan. She was 96.
Her daughter Laurie Shainwald Kleeger announced the death, which was not widely reported.
Ms. Shainwald was 48 years old and newly graduated from law school when she was hired at Julien, Schlesinger & Finz, a New York City law firm, and assigned to the team representing Joyce Bichler, a 25-year-old social worker who was the survivor of a rare cancer, clear-cell adenocarcinoma of the vagina and cervix. Her cancer was caused by a drug her mother had taken during pregnancy: diethylstilbestrol, a synthetic hormone known as DES and sold under many brand names to prevent miscarriage.
At 18, Ms. Bichler had undergone a radical hysterectomy, which removed her ovaries, her fallopian tubes and two-thirds of her vagina. She was one of thousands of women who became known as DES daughters for the cancers and infertility they suffered because their mothers had taken the drug. She was suing Eli Lilly, one of the drug’s largest manufacturers, for damages.
In 1947, when DES was approved by the Food and Drug Administration for use in pregnant women, studies had shown that it produced cancers in mice and rats and that it could cross the placenta and harm the fetus. Yet companies marketed it as a safe remedy for a catchall of conditions, from spotting during pregnancy to miscarriages, and continued to do so even after reports began to surface that it was, in fact, ineffective in treating those conditions.
In the late 1960s, cases of clear-cell adenocarcinoma began to be diagnosed in young women whose mothers had taken the drug. In 1971, the F.D.A. told doctors to stop prescribing it. By then, according to the National Cancer Institute, an estimated five to 10 million people — the women who had been prescribed it and their children — had been exposed to DES.