DES across the Atlantic: What Medicine Knew and What Women Lived.

Inspired by A Life Lived Chronically and One Drug, Two Lives including a panel discussion with DES daughters and experts

Updated!

About the Event

Join British author, DES daughter and documentary participant Claire Silverstone-Bright for a distinctive evening of memoir, medicine and transatlantic conversation in the Hall of Immortals at Chicago’s International Museum of Surgical Science.

The event will mark the Chicago launch of Claire’s memoir, A Life Lived Chronically: Memoir of a DES Daughter, and will feature exclusive advance clips from Over the Bloody Moon’s forthcoming documentary, One Drug, Two Lives.

Claire is one of the documentary’s two principal participants. This special Chicago event takes place just two weeks before the film’s world premiere on December 1, 2026, offering guests an early glimpse of the documentary and the stories at its heart.

One Drug. A Shared History. Different Landscapes.

Diethylstilbestrol, commonly known as DES, was prescribed to pregnant women in the United States, the United Kingdom and countries around the world.

The drug crossed borders. Its consequences crossed generations.

Yet the landscapes that developed around DES were very different.

In the United States, DES became the subject of significant scientific research, legal action, public-health awareness and organised advocacy. In Britain, many DES-exposed people remained unidentified, dispersed and without consistent clinical recognition, specialist knowledge or clearly defined care.

DES Across the Atlantic brings these histories together.

The evening will explore what the American and British DES experiences can learn from one another, how medical knowledge is preserved or lost, and what it means to live with the consequences of a medical decision made before birth.

Voices from Across the DES Ecosystem

Alongside Claire’s memoir and documentary work, the evening is being developed to include a panel-style series of short talks and conversations from people working across the DES ecosystem.

This may include DES daughters and sons, campaigners, patient advocates, researchers, clinicians, historians and others who have helped preserve, challenge and expand understanding of DES over many decades.

The aim is not to present a single version of the DES story, but to bring together different perspectives from across advocacy, lived experience, medicine, research and public awareness.

Together, these voices will consider:

• what has changed for DES-exposed people;
• what remains unresolved;
• what different generations and national communities can learn from one another;
• how DES knowledge can be preserved as the exposed population ages;
• and what the next phase of awareness, research and advocacy might look like.

Additional speakers and contributors will be announced as they are confirmed.

Memoir, Film and Lived Experience

At the centre of the evening is A Life Lived Chronically, Claire’s account of a lifetime shaped by prenatal DES exposure.

The memoir moves beyond a list of diagnoses to examine the cumulative experience of chronic illness, reproductive harm, fragmented healthcare, missing medical records and the repeated need to explain connections that medicine has often considered separately.

Through readings, documentary clips, short talks and live conversation, the evening will connect personal testimony with the wider history and continuing legacy of DES.

In the Hall of Immortals

The setting gives the evening particular resonance.

Surrounded by figures commemorated for their contributions to medicine and scientific discovery, we will consider another essential form of medical history: the knowledge carried by patients whose bodies continue to record the consequences of decisions made decades ago.

In a hall dedicated to those who shaped medical history, we gather to hear from those whose lives were shaped by it.

What to Expect

The evening will include:

• exclusive pre-premiere clips from One Drug, Two Lives;
• readings from A Life Lived Chronically;
• a panel-style series of short talks and conversations from across the DES community;
• transatlantic discussion about the American and British DES landscapes;
• audience questions and discussion;
• and an opportunity to meet contributors and purchase a signed copy of the book.

This event is for DES daughters, sons and families, healthcare professionals, researchers, advocates, students, memoir readers and anyone interested in medical history, patient testimony and the long-term consequences of healthcare decisions.

This is not simply a book launch, nor a conventional film event.

It is a gathering of voices around one shared medical history and the lives that continue to carry it.