My mother-in-law, Dr Isabel Gal, who has died aged 92, was working at Queen Mary’s hospital for children in Carshalton, Surrey, in the 1960s when her research suggested that a hormone-based pregnancy test drug called Primodos caused birth defects similar to those seen with thalidomide.
Her findings were published in the journal Nature in 1967. In 1975 the Committee on Safety of Medicines issued a warning which was printed on the packaging, but the drug remained in use in the UK until 1978 – and Isabel believed that she was subsequently frozen out of the medical profession.
The case was taken up by the MP Jack Ashley, by several newspapers and more recently by Sky News, which made a documentary on the subject. In 2017 an expert working group set up by the Commission on Human Medicines concluded that there was no “causal association” between Primodos and severe disabilities in babies, but the Association for Children Damaged by Hormone Pregnancy Tests severely criticised the report.
Isabel was born into a Jewish family in Hungary, the daughter of Geza Gunsberger, who worked for a timber merchant before founding a successful lingerie company, and Irma (nee Hacker), who came from Austria. Geza died in the Holocaust, while Isabel, along with her mother and her sister Lia, survived Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. They returned to Hungary, Isabel qualifying as a doctor at the University of Budapest’s medical school and working as a paediatrician at Bokay hospital for children in the city.
In 1953 she married a mathematician, Endre Gal, whom she had known since childhood; his father was the timber merchant for whom Geza had worked. In 1956 their daughter, Katinka, known as Kathy, was born, but with the Hungarian revolution in full swing they decided to flee the country, along with Irma. It was a risky business as they had to be smuggled over the border into Austria. Isabel’s sister Erica sponsored their move to England, where she had previously settled. Erica died in 2017.
Isabel requalified in medicine at Edinburgh University; she found the Scottish accent easier to understand than Londoners’. With paediatrics as her specialty, she worked at institutions including Great Ormond Street hospital and Queen Mary’s, Carshalton.
Isabel is survived by Endre, Lia and Kathy.
