Sybil Shainwald, lawyer who fought for women's health, dies at 96

Sybil Shainwald, a lawyer who represented women for almost half a century, whose health was irreparable due to poorly tested drugs and medical devices and often catastrophic, died on April 9 in her house in Manhattan. She was 96.

Her daughter Laurie Shainwald Kleeger announced the death that was not generally reported.

Ms. Shainwald was 48 years old and completed the legal faculty when she was assigned to the team in Julien, Schlesinger & Finz, a law firm in New York City, the Joyce Bichler, a 25-year-old social worker who represented the survivor of a rare cancer “Clear-Cell-Adenocarcinoma and Cervix. Her cancer was caused by a medication that had taken her mother during pregnancy: Diethylstilstrol, a synthetic hormone that is known as the one and was sold under many brand names to prevent miscarriage.

At the age of 18, Ms. Bichler had subjected a radical hysterectomy to remove her ovaries, her fallopian tubes and two thirds of her vagina. It was one of thousands of women who had been known for the cancer and infertility they had suffered as the Daughter because her mothers had taken the drug. She sued Eli Lilly, one of the largest manufacturers of the drug.

When the 1947 was approved by the Food and Drug Administration for the use in pregnant women, studies had shown that they created cancer in mice and rats and crossed the placenta and damage the fetus. However, companies marketed it as a safe remedy for a hook of diseases, from leasing during pregnancy to miscarriages and continued after the occurrence of reports that this was ineffective in the treatment of these conditions.

In the late 1960s, cases of clear-celladenocarcinoma were diagnosed in young women whose mothers had taken the drug. In 1971 the FDA asked the doctors not to prescribe them. Until then, according to the National Cancer Institute, an estimated five to 10 million people – the women who were prescribed and their children were prescribed.

When Ms. Bichler's case went to court in 1979, it was just one of many complaints that had been submitted over the years. However, none was successful because it was difficult to determine which manufacturer had produced the medicine. Around 300 companies had done it.

Ms. Bichler's team presented a new argument: all manufacturers shared the responsibility for the medicine and its effects. After five days of considering the jury agreed and Ms. Bichler received damages of 500,000 US dollars.

Ms. Shainwald's role was crucial, said Ms. Bichler in an interview: “I was this shy young woman in which all these men in a public environment talk about my private female organs, and it was overwhelming.

On the fourth day of the jury, Ms. Bichler said, Eli Lilly offered her a settlement of $ 100,000. Most of her team suggested that she might want to accept it.

“Sybil took my husband and me aside and said:” What do you and Mike want to do? Don't be afraid, “remembered Ms. Bichler.” Sybil gave me the power and permission to say: 'We didn't settle. “

She added: “I did what I had to do, but it was really sybil that did it.”

In the early 1980s she opened her own office and was a point of contact for the Daughter. In the next four decades, she successfully represented many hundreds of women.

In 1996 she received a class action to set up a fund for the Daughter, which was paid by the manufacturers of the drug to cover the medical and advisory editions and an educational program.

But that was not the only dangerous product for which they helped women receive compensation.

She represented women whose silicone breast implants had caused autoimmune problems. It represented women who had been injured by the Dalkonschild-Deschild-Deschen-Desinsträtzittel, which caused pelvic infections and infertility, and which were affected by Norplantia, the long-acting subdermal contraceptives. (Years earlier, she had asked the FDA not to approve the use of Norplants and to warn of her still unknown side effects.)

She helped women outside the United States to receive compensation for their incorrect breast implants and for those to whom the Dalkon sign was prescribed. She was stunned that women in Africa had never been told about the side effects of the Dalkon sign and that doctors were still prescribed there, even after being drawn from the American market.

She also taught the dangers of Depo-Provera, another long-acting contraceptive that was associated with cancer in laboratory animals, which had been prescribed for women in about 80 countries for decades from the late 1960s. For use as a contraceptive until 1992.

“The contraceptive development has always meant drugs and devices for women,” said Ms. Shainwald in an oral history of the Veteran Feminists of America organization in 2019. “We pay for research and life with our tax money for the results.”

Ms. Shainwald “was an important jurisdiction for the women's health movement,” said Cindy Pearson, the former managing director of the National Women's Health Network. “She would sink her teeth into a problem and it didn't matter how big her opponent was.”

Sybil Brodkin was born on April 27, 1928 in New York City as Anne (Zimmerman) Brodkin and Morris Brodkin, who had a restaurant. She was 16 years old when she joined the James Madison High School in Brooklyn Schloss and in Williamsburg, Virginia, to the college of William & Mary, where she acquired a Bachelor's degree in history in 1948.

In 1960 she married Sidney Shainwald, an accountant and consumer lawyer – he was Associate Director of the Consumers Union, now Consumer Reports – and taught English in Junior High Schools while raising her four children.

In 1972 she acquired a master in history at Columbia University and received a scholarship in the same year to create an oral history of the consumer movement and to establish the center for studying the consumer movement, which she headed until 1978.

When she was 44 years old, she joined the New York Law School as a night student and received her end in 1976

Ms. Shainwald still referred to cases in her death.

In addition to Ms. Kleeger, Ms. Shainwald is survived by another daughter, Louise Nasr; A son, Robert; A brother, Barry Schwartz; Four grandchildren; and five great -grandchildren. Mr. Shainwald died in 2003. Her daughter Marsha Shainwald died in 2013.

“I know that I have a few more years in front of me because my practice is to sue the corporate America on behalf of women,” said Ms. Shainwald in a speech in 2016.