Scandal: Thalidomide The worlds worst Medical Disaster? | Short Documentary

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My mother was offered it, but her morning sickness was mild, she did not believe in medicine for every little discomfort, and she turned it down. Thanks mom!

Around 1960, I grew up next door to a boy who had Thalidomide deformed arms. We used to all play together, and we kids didn't think much of it, although we knew he was different. We were all around 8-11 years old. One of his arms ended a few inches from his shoulder, with 3 fingers. His other arm stopped at the elbow, with 2 fingers. He moved away later. I saw him again when I was around 22. I went to a club with a girlfriend to dance to the live rock band playing there. They sounded great. The drummer was perfect. When I got closer to the band, I saw that it was that same guy, all grown up, and living a normal life. He played drums like any drummer would, with maybe not as much speed, but perfect timing and musicianship. It was nice to see that he turned out alright.

A doctor once called me a "pill phobic". I saw he wrote that in my chart so I asked him why it was bad to ask about prescriptions. He said he was the one who went to medical school and to trust in medicine's advances. Nowadays you get an entire printout about your medications.

As a new Pharmacist this drug still haunts us. It's something that is informally covered in our degree to the point we can name almost every detail of the incident. Now that doctors are starting to prescribe it again (for certain illnesses), you get the worst feeling filling this script. For all the bad, this single drug is what gets most people in pharmacy interested in Organic Chem, which I guess is a positive

I was born in 1962. When my mother was carrying me, she had really bad morning sickness. She asked her doctor (later my doctor) about this new wonder-drug called Thalidomide. Doctor Graham advised her to read a good book instead. Perhaps he’d heard about the growing negative research about the drug, but it was good advice, and I was born with normal limbs.  The book was Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen, a beefy tome I inherited. That book prevented the often drastic and often disastrous operations performed on Thalidomide babies, and has allowed me to live a normal life, and I’m thankful to my mum, Doctor Ian Graham and Jane Austen for that.

I grew up in Germany, and my Kindergarten teacher was affected by thalidomide. Her arms did not develop fully/correctly, so she did everything with her toes. It was so cool to see her cut paper, she did it better than I still could with my hands. She was a cool gal, and she was always very inspirational to me.

I first learned about the horrors of thalidomide in middle school. My friend and I for unknown reasons memorized the song We Didn't Start The Fire together. We only understood like 5% of the references and decided to google the weirdest sounding words to find out what they meant, such as Thalidomide, Starkweather and Eichmann. We regretted it.

A woman I knew had a miscarriage due to Thalidomide. ALL of the doctors in the country were interested in her next pregnancy as they did not know if the genetic effects of the Thalidomide would have a permanent effect on the mother's ability to bear healthy children, or if it only affected embryos that were directly exposed. She was the first in this country to have another child after a Thalidomide effect. The child turned out ok and now has four healthy children of his own.

I went to school with a "Thalidomide Baby" here in the US; his mother was part of the clinical trials before they were halted. He was mentally OK, but his legs and one arm were tiny and misshapen. He rather painfully hobbled around on prosthetic legs and crutches. Unsurprisingly, he was not a particularly cheerful fellow, although he did the best he could. No idea what happened to him after high school...

My mother was strongly advised to take thalidomide when she was pregnant with my younger sister. Our old-school "doctor knows best" GP was not best pleased when she point blank refused. To the end of her days Mum couldn't really explain why she refused it beyond a lifelong dislike of taking medication and the knowledge from her first pregnancy (me) that the morning sickness would eventually stop anyway. If Mum hadn't faced down the GP my sister would probably have turned out very differently from the pretty, funny, sporty girl that she became. It makes me shudder just to think about it

My mother asked her doctor to prescribe it for her morning sickness he refused saying he was very hesitant about giving drugs to pregnant women.Every time I see someone with the flipper arms from Thalidomide I cringe inside I always wanted to thank the Doctor but he died when I was very young.Dr William McBride is a saint for discovering the link to birth defects.

My lovely teacher in primary school was what we call a "contergan baby" - she had deformities in her face, arms and hands. I remember her telling us about it in a very child friendly way, so it's shocking and eye opening to hear how it actually was.

Thankfully Thalidomide wasn't just binned as it is a highly effective cancer drug, I know this because I was diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma, a blood cancer and combined with Velcade and Dexamethasone successfully got me into remission. I'm now on a maintenance chemo regime which uses low-dose Lenalidomide (which from another comment to this video is a derivative of Thalidomide)as the active cancer drug, which also can cause 'birth defects'. The only side effect Ihave is peripheral neuropathy, eg numb feet. Another excellent bit of storytelling John, thank you.

I had a close family friend who's wife took Thalidomide early in her pregnancy and their daughter was born with her left arm missing from about 6 inches below her elbow. It just ended with a bone covered by skin. And if she got mad and hit you with it, it hurt. She was fitted with a device that had a curved set if "pincers" so she could grasp and pick up objects with it. She was a smart, bright girl who didn't let her deformity slow her down. This video made me think of her for the first time in years. She was also the March of Dimes poster child in the late 1960's in our area.

My mother lost 3 babies to Thalidomide, twins Robert and Simon (February 10,1963) and Ruth (my twin sister, November 3, 1963). Yes I am affected by Thalidomide, I was sent home to die as the doctors needed the humidicrib I was in for other babies ( they believed I was too weak to survive), I’ve just turned 60 and I’m obviously still here. My mother took Thalidomide between days 23-26 of her pregnancy with Ruth and I. Thalidomide was banned in Australia August 1962, the federal government never made the announcement as it wanted to avoid public hysteria, so there was no government agent follow up to make sure doctors and pharmacists weren’t still prescribing or dispensing the drug to pregnant women. My mother was prescribed it by our family doctor and dispensed by our family pharmacist for her depression after losing Robert and Simon, she didn’t know she was pregnant with Ruth and l and she ended up taking the drug between days 23-26 of her pregnancy.

As a chemist I was taught about this drug. It was used as an example of the importance of enantiomers. One enantiomer is a sedative, the other is a tetratogen. None of this other history was taught and I feel its really important.

My mother requested it but she had an "old fashioned" doctor who refused to prescribe what he considered an experimental drug.

My grandma actually took it while she was pregnant with my dad, luckily after the period when it could affect the unborn child. But it sure must have been terrifying to know that while the scandal came to light

Its pretty crazy to me how shady the medical field is and how they have openly given us harmful substances and turned a blind eye to it yet people will still blindly follow their advice and shame any one that questions it