A clin­i­cal tri­al in the Nether­lands has gone hor­ri­fy­ing­ly south, with news this morn­ing that 11 new­born ba­bies have died af­ter their moth­ers took a drug best known for erec­tile dys­func­tion dur­ing preg­nan­cy.

The drug was a gener­ic form of silde­nafil, which works by di­lat­ing the blood ves­sels. The brand­ed ver­sion of this drug is Vi­a­gra, but Pfiz­er was quick to note it had no in­volve­ment with this study. More on that lat­er.

The study was ini­ti­at­ed by re­searchers at the Am­s­ter­dam Uni­ver­si­ty Med­ical Cen­ter. They rea­soned — and had an­i­mal ev­i­dence to hope — the drug might boost the growth of ba­bies who weren’t de­vel­op­ing well in the womb by en­cour­ag­ing bet­ter blood flow through the pla­cen­ta.

The tri­al was ter­mi­nat­ed last week, how­ev­er, when an in­de­pen­dent com­mit­tee found that a trou­bling num­ber of ba­bies were be­ing born with lung prob­lems. The tri­al, led by Am­s­ter­dam Uni­ver­si­ty Med­ical Cen­tre, in­clud­ed 93 women on the drug. Sev­en­teen of the ba­bies de­vel­oped lung prob­lems, and 11 have since died. Of the 90 women in the con­trol group on place­bo, 3 ba­bies de­vel­oped the same lung prob­lems but no ba­bies died.

Pfiz­er blast­ed state­ments out to all me­dia who picked up on this sto­ry, not­ing that they had no in­volve­ment.

“Pfiz­er was not in­volved in any as­pect of this tri­al, and nei­ther fund­ed nor pro­vid­ed prod­uct for the tri­al,” the com­pa­ny said in a state­ment. “In ad­di­tion, the prin­ci­ple in­ves­ti­ga­tors at the Am­s­ter­dam Uni­ver­si­ty Med­ical Cen­tre have con­firmed a non-Pfiz­er man­u­fac­tured gener­ic ver­sion of silde­nafil was used but that no clin­i­cal tri­al par­tic­i­pants were ad­min­is­tered Vi­a­gra, Pfiz­er silde­nafil or any oth­er Pfiz­er med­i­cine.”

Sad­ly, some­where be­tween 10 and 15 Dutch women are still wait­ing to find out if their child has been af­fect­ed by the drug. It is feared the drug caused high blood pres­sure in the lungs, lead­ing to the ba­bies re­ceiv­ing too lit­tle oxy­gen.

The hos­pi­tal said this in a state­ment to The Guardian: