Real Families: Voices of Thalidomide's Children

The summer of 1982 I was 6 months pregnant, my husband came home early from work crying. He threw an article down on the table and told me to read it. The article's title was "The Benedictine Scare" and showed a baby with no arms or legs....Apparently, Merrell and Dow changed one ingredient in thalidomide and put it back on the market as "Benedictine" in 1978. I got the prescription bottle of Benedictine out, and read to my husband "Quantity 20", I then poured them out and counted all 20 of them....I told him I had not taken any of them, I ate crackers and drank tea instead....He cried in relief....I am surprised there was no mention of this and how sneaky these companies are in the documentary.......The Benedictine was pulled in 1983....My daughter is a triathlete and travels the world.

my husband was born in 1959. He had three older siblings which each pregnancy my mother in law had pretty bad morning sickness... she heard about this drug and asked the doctor for it... He looked at it and said no.. not at all from me I am positive it will hurt your baby and maybe you, I can't prove it but I feel strongly and have looked into it heavily, I am being offered money to prescribe it and I would rather stop practicing medicine and do anything else before I will ever prescribe it... She is 88 years old now and still talks about it today... she feels blessed she simply had the right doctor.

My first wife Elfriede was born in Germany with a missing left for-arm due to the medicine taken by her mother. Elfriede was an absolute Saint. She died July 5, 2004.

No matter how disabled a child is he or she deserves to live & be loved.

Wow I didn’t realise the first baby was born affected by the drug in the 50’s . I was born September 1961 . My mother was offered it for morning sickness but my father told her not to take it . His reasoning ... you’re not the first woman to have morning sickness you won’t be the last ! Don’t you just love him 🤷‍♀️ thanks to my chauvinistic father I was spared this awful negligence .

This is the sort of thing that ought to be taught in history classes.

I had a math teacher on my German high school, whose mother had taken Contergan while carrying her. Even though she was missing both upper and lower arm parts (meaning her hands started right at her shoulders, missing a few fingers, and if I remember correctly her spine was missing 2 invertebral discs, which put a lot of strain on her back) she never let it hold her back. The school had a modified blackboard that she could control with her feet and she just stood really close to it and wrote on there with her fingers gripping the chalk. Sometimes some chalk would get on her shirt and she'd joke about it and she also was very open to us about her disability. She let nothing hold herself back, and as far as I know she is still happily married with kids. And she was the best math teacher I had and I managed the best marks of my short-lived math career in the years I had her as my teacher, still to this day I have the deepest respect for her and think of her fondly.

15:05 When the lady said no one said anything when the baby was born, "it was loud silence" what a great way to explain it. I felt that

Wow. The woman in the US who fought against the drug companies to stop this drug from entering the market is the true definition of a heroine. God bless her.

My mother was offered Thalidomide while she was carrying me. She said, no, thank you. God bless my Mom.

My mother was offered this drug with her second pregnancy in 1962, but she refused believing that "no drug is safe in the first 3 months after getting pregnant" (first Trimester). How right she was!

Bless this elderly couple who took the place in raising a child/person who has so many challenges. They had raised their own children and could have decided to retire of that, but they stepped up and gave her the best life she could have. This is very selfless and is a perfect example of service and love.

The CEOs of these plant should have been charged with Crimes against Humanity...its unbelievable how many babies had to be hurt in the wake of greed

My mother was offered Thalidomide when she was expecting me but decided against it.Thanks Mum.

I'm an 18 year old brazilian and it's baffling how I've never heard of this. Makes me wonder about how many things from today's time will be forgotten or misremembered in the future, or even, how many harmful things we are living with today, that will only be discovered some years or decades down the line.

My neighbor was the mother of one of these babies. Despite all the handicaps her daughter endured, I thank God she was born! She was the sweetest, kindest most loving little girl I ever met. "Donna" was one in a million and I loved her dearly. Her mother would never have taken Thalidomide had she known what the results would be, but her daughter was the best person I ever knew. I don't know if she's still alive, but I just wanted to say, Donna, thank you for babysitting me and singing to me when I was lonely. I love you like a sister.

"ignored early warning signs." That's what cuts so deeply. They knew early on and didn't care.

God bless the lady who refused to allow thalidomide in the US.

Did not search for this but recommended on YouTube, I don't even know what is thalidomide before. Thanks too YouTube I have learnt a great lesson

Me and my brother are both disabled (genetic condition) and found out just a decade ago that we had a disabled relative who was put in a home straight from birth. Noone in our family or any of our relatives knew about her, and her parents had never said anything. We only found out she existed when she died, she spent almost 70 years completely alone with strangers because her parents didn’t want anyone to know they had a disabled baby. Stories like these really hurt when you are disabled yourself, I’m so lucky to have had amazing parents.