Sybil Shainwald, a lawyer who fought for women’s health, dies at the age of 96

Sybil Shainwald, a lawyer who for almost half a century, represented women whose health was irreversibly and often catastrophicly hurt by incorrectly tested medical drugs and devices, died on April 9 at her house in Manhattan. She was 96 years elderly.

Her daughter Laurie Shainwald Kleger announced death that was not widely reported.

Mrs. Shainwald was 48 years elderly and newly graduated from the law, when she was employed in Julien, Schlesinger & Finz, a law firm in Up-to-date York, and assigned to a team representing Joyka Bichler, a 25-year-old social worker who survived a occasional cancer, a gromlac from clear cells, a pure cell. Her cancer was caused by a medicine that her mother took during pregnancy: dietylstilbestrol, Synthetic hormone known as des and sold under many brands to prevent miscarriage.

At the age of 18, Bichler underwent a radical hysterectomy, which removed her ovaries, ovary and two -thirds of the vagina. She was one of the thousands of women who became known as des daughters because of cancer and infertility that suffered because their mothers took the medicine. He sued Eli Lilly, one of the largest drug producers, for damage.

In 1947, when DS was approved by the food and second administration for exploit in pregnant women, studies showed that it produced cancer at mice and rats It can cross the placenta and harm the fetus. However, companies sold this as a protected medicine to catch the conditions, from detecting during pregnancy to miscarriage, and they still do it, even after reports began to appear that in fact it was ineffective in the treatment of these conditions.

At the end of the 1960s, the cases of adenoma with tidy cells began to be diagnosed in adolescent women whose mothers took the medicine. In 1971, FDA told the doctors to stop rewriting them. Until then According to the National Cancer InstituteAbout five to 10 million people – women who were prescribed and their children – were exposed to des.

When Mrs. Bichler’s case went to court in 1979, it was only another of many lawsuits that have been filed over the years. However, none was successful, because it was tough to determine which manufacturer produced the medicine in each case. About 300 companies created des.

Mrs. Bichler’s team presented an creative argument: that all producers shared responsibility for the drug and its effects. After five days of the meeting, the jury agreed, and Mrs. Bichler received compensation of USD 500,000.

The role of Mrs. Shainwald was crucial, said Mrs. Bichler in an interview: “I was this shy adolescent woman, having all these men talking about my private female organs in a public environment, and it was overwhelming. I was terrified. I was terrified. Sybil was the only woman. She saw me, she was holding me and knew what was at the stake.”

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

“Sybil picked up my husband and me and said:” What do you and Mike want to do? Don’t be afraid, “recalls Bichler. “Sybil gave me the power and permission to say:” We do not settle. “

She added: “I did what I had to do, but it was Siberia really made it happen.”

In the early 1980s, she opened her own office and was a lawyer for Des Daughters. Over the next four decades, she successfully represented many hundreds of women.

In 1996, she won a collective lawsuit in order to establish a fund for De Daughters, paid by the drug producers, to cover medical and advisory costs and an educational program.

But Des was not the only risky product for which she helped women receive compensation.

She represented women whose silicone breast implants caused autoimmune problems. She represented women who were hurt by Dalkon Shield-Eve tear contraceptives, which caused infections and infertility of pelvis-those affected by Norplant, a long-acting designer contraceptive. (Many years earlier she called the FDA so that she would not approve the exploit of Norplant, warnings about its still unknown side effects).

She helped women from outside the United States to receive compensation for their defective breast implants and for those that the Dalkon shield was prescribed. She was stunned when she learned that women in Africa were never told about the side effects of the Shield bleak and that the doctors were still prescribing her, even after removing from the American market.

She also lectured on the dangers of Depo-Profer, another long-acting contraceptive related to cancer in laboratory animals, which, despite this, have been prescribed for decades, from the slow 1960s, women in about 80 countries, as well as the United States, where he was given to the penniless, minority and disabled women-women The disastrous form of population control, as she saw it, for people considered to be inability by society – Although the FDA will not be approved for exploit as a contraceptive until 1992.

“Contraception development has always meant drugs and devices for women” Mrs. Shainwald said in the oral history of the organization’s feminist veteran in 2019. “We pay for tax dollars for research and our lives for the results.”

Mrs. Shainwald “was an crucial legal warrior in the Women’s Health Movement,” said Cindy Pearson, former executive director of the National Women’s Health Network. “She would immerse her teeth in the problem and it didn’t matter how gigantic her opponent was.”

Sybil Brodkin was born on April 27, 1928 in Up-to-date York, the only daughter of Anne (Zimmerman) Brodkin and Morris Brodkin, who had a restaurant. She was 16 when she graduated from James Madison High School in Brooklyn and entered the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, where in 1948 she obtained the title of a bachelor’s degree in history.

She married Sidney Shainwald, an accountant and consumer lawyer – he was the deputy director of the Consumer Union, currently consumer reports – in 1960 and taught English in junior high school, raising four children.

Obtained a master’s degree in history at Columbia University in 1972 Consumer Movement Center Center, which she directed until 1978.

She introduced the Up-to-date York Legal School as a night student when she was 44 years elderly and obtained a legal degree in 1976. She hoped for studies in Colombia when she obtained a degree of history there – the school offered a joint program – but he said through the dean, as she remembered in oral history in 2019: “You will occupy a man who will practice for 40 years.”

Mrs. Shainwald still referred to matters after her death.

In addition to Mrs. Kleger, Mrs. Shainwald survived another daughter, Louise Nasr; Son Robert; 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 years of work ahead of me because my practice is to sue corporate America on behalf of women” Shainwald said in a speech in 2016. “Unfortunately, I never lack business.”