There is a particular kind of inheritance that does not appear on any manifest.

It is not declared at borders. It is not wrapped in cloth or tucked into hand luggage. It does not pass through customs, and no official ever asks about it.

When Jewish families moved across continents in the twentieth century — from Europe to America, from Britain to Israel — they carried with them the visible markers of continuity: faith, language, memory, food, ritual. These are the things we speak about when we speak about migration. These are the things we celebrate.

But some inheritances arrived unannounced.

I live in London. My life is rooted here. And yet the story I carry is not confined by geography.

I am a daughter of DES — Diethylstilbestrol — a synthetic hormone prescribed to pregnant women from the late 1930s through to the early 1970s. It was given in good faith, widely and confidently, to prevent miscarriage and support pregnancies considered at risk.

For decades, it was regarded as a success.

And then, slowly, something began to surface.

In the early 1970s, clinicians began to identify a rare form of vaginal and cervical cancer — clear cell adenocarcinoma — in young women who would not ordinarily have been at risk. The cases were unusual not only in their rarity, but in the age of the patients.

What connected them was not lifestyle, or environment, but something far earlier.

Their mothers had been prescribed DES during pregnancy.

That realisation marked a turning point. What had been considered a protective intervention was now understood to have caused harm across generations. The daughters of those pregnancies — DES daughters — were found to have increased risks not only of this rare cancer, but of structural changes to the reproductive system, fertility........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)