Although China has made it a struggle, and the weather has been dreadful, the ring-fenced and muddy Huairou site has become the world’s biggest agitprop fair, with songs and demonstrations as added diversions. At Huairou, where the 10-day Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) Forum will close tomorrow night, it is unpredictability and generally good-natured chaos that have ruled the day, although there were thousands of furious women yesterday morning who failed to fit into the converted cinema where Hillary Clinton was speaking.
In this Tale of Two Conferences, there is no doubt which is the more energetic. It is not only physical distance that separates the two women’s gatherings. At the official conference, which opened on Monday and runs until 15 September, excessive air-conditioning and a forest-load of plenary session speeches are signs that the UN’s huge conference machinery is up and running. An hour’s drive away at Huairou, site of the non-governmental women’s forum, the main danger is slipping in the mud as participants in walking shoes, trainers or flip-flops pick their rain-soaked way from one workshop to the next. At the Peking International Convention Centre, snappily shod government negotiators in business garb tread carefully through the corridors of the UN World Conference on Women, across floors polished so shiny it is a challenge to keep upright. One can tell by the shoes where a delegate is going for the day.

He had claimed that another drug used in pregnancy, Debendox, also caused birth defects and it was withdrawn. It was subsequently found that laboratory work did support these findings. It was in a letter to the British Medical Journal in1994, Dr McBride first raised the possibility of thalidomide causing genetic damage, based on two British cases in which remarkably similar defects were seen in the son and daughter of two thalidomide victims.ends. The Department of Health said it would view Dr McBride’s findings with interest.Dr McBride, an Australian gynaecologist who first alerted the world to the dangers of thalidomide 34 years ago, was struck off the New South Wales medical register in 1993 for scientific fraud.

Lesser degrees of genetic damage could result in malformed fingers and toes. If the genetic code of primordial…ovaries or testes is damaged, then some of the offspring of the thalidomide victims would be affected also.”Other scientists greeted Dr McBride’s claims with scepticism. Dr Nigel Brown, of the Medical Research Council’s embryology unit in London and an expert on malformations caused by drugs, said the “vast bulk” of evidence was against thalidomide having any genetic effects.Neil Buckland, director of the Thalidomide Trust which administers the compensation fund set up in the wake of the tragedy, said he had “no idea” if the new findings would lead to more money for victims.”Our medical advisers have consistently held the belief that this situation of thalidomide damage cannot be passed on to second generation individuals.We have not seen Dr McBride’s published data and until the Thalidomide Trust’s medical advisers have an opportunity to look at it and for it to be subsequently considered by the trustees, I think there’s nothing that we can say.”However, Freddie Astbury of TAG (UK) said Dr McBride’s claim was a much- needed boost to its campaign to win extra compensation for the “second generation.” About pounds 60m remains from the original compensation fund for the 458 British victims. If the cells [coded for by this portion of DNA] are very badly damaged this could result in an absence of limbs or organs.

They have got to do something now before more babies are born like this.”Dr McBride and colleague Dr Peter Huang, whose work has been funded by the charity Foundation 41 in Sydney, told the 23rd Annual Conference of the European Teratology Society that they had shown how part of the thalidomide molecule could bind to genetic material in rat embryos, disrupting the genetic code.Dr McBride said: “If it binds to the DNA it inevitably interferes with the genetic code We think thalidomide possibly does the same thing in humans. There are 9 such cases in Britain, according to The Thalidomide Action Group UK, and others in Bolivia, Japan, Germany and Belgium.Glenn Harrison, 35, who has a two-year-old daughter Georgina with “two stumps for legs and only two fingers on each hand, just like me” said Dr McBride’s work was “very, very important.”Mr Harrison, a haulage contractor from Crowland, near Peterborough, added: “When I saw Georgina being born it was like a nightmare It was history repeating itself. LIZ HUNT

Health Editor
Birth defects inflicted by the drug thalidomide could, in theory, be passed on to the children of the first generation of victims, a scientist has claimed.Dr William McBride, whose previous work has achieved both world-wide acclaim and condemnation, told a conference in Dublin that he has shown how thalidomide can disrupt DNA, the genetic code of inheritance.This would explain why a few children born to thalidomide victims had similar physical abnormalities to their parents, Dr McBride said. The Scottish Nationalists have put on 4 per cent to 26 per cent, while the Conservatives remain unchanged at 12 per cent.
The Liberal Democrats dropped 3 per cent to 8 per cent although this could pick up later this month with the publicity spin-off from their party’s national conference which is being held in Glasgow The Green Party has scored 1 per cent.. Support for Labour has slipped 2 per cent in Scotland although the party continues to dominate the political landscape north of the border, an opinion poll indicated last night. The party has dropped to 52 per cent from 54 per cent last month, according to the System Three poll published in the Herald newspaper.