Thalidomide - The Story You Don't Know (Part Two) - What Your GP Doesn't Tell You Podcast
How Many Americans Were Given The Drug Although It Was Never Approved For Use In The States
The latest episode of the What Your GP Doesn’t Tell You Podcast - Thalidomide - The Story You Don’t Know (Part Two) is now available on Apple, Spotify and other podcast platforms. And you can sign up to the podcast mailing list at What Your GP Doesn't Tell You, where you can also find out more about the pod. The next episode of the podcast will go out on Tuesday 12th December.
In the second half of the story, exploring journalist Jennifer Vanderbes’s new investigation into thalidomide, this episode comes to a shocking conclusion. As Vanderbes reveals in new book Wonder Drug - The Hidden Victims of America’s Secret Thalidomide Scandal, it now seems that even more babies were harmed by the drug then has previously been thought.
Vanderbes reveals for the very first time, the impact thalidomide had not just in Germany, Great Britain, and many other countries, but in the US too, a country that because it never approved thalidomide, had largely been thought to have escaped the heartbreaking consequences of the drug.
This episode picks up the story with geneticist, Dr Widukind Lenz, raising his concerns about thalidomide at a medical conference, which finally leads to its manufacturer, Chemie Grunenthal, removing it from the German market.
While Lenz, working with Karl Schulte-Hillen, a father whose child had been harmed by thalidomide, has successfully applied pressure in Germany. In Australia, obstetrician Dr William McBride says he has raised his concern with the British company, Distillers Biochemicals, who are a distributor for the drug. But who knew what when remains highly disputed.
Thalidomide has never been approved in the US because FDA reviewer, Dr Frances Kelsey, has not been convinced by the evidence that the US company, Merrell, has submitted in its application for the drug’s approval.
But what neither Kelsey nor anyone else at the FDA know at this time is that the company has actually sent the drug pre-approval, via its sales force, to over 1,200 doctors who have then passed it on to other colleagues.
However, it isn’t until four months after the drug is withdrawn from the German market, that Merrell removes its FDA application, and there is a further delay before it begins contacting doctors.
As the FDA begins its investigations, it discovers that thalidomide has been sent all over the country, and trying to find out where and to whom the drug has been sent, quickly becomes clear is an impossible job.
This means it is very difficult to identify how a woman who gives birth to a baby with what appears to be thalidomide disabilities received the drug. As a result, extraordinarily even today, the US has never compensated its thalidomide survivors.
This is despite the fact that Vanderbes estimates that in total around five million doses of the drug were circulating in the US and that it was given to hundreds of pregnant women.
Jennifer Vanderbes Wonder Drug The Hidden Victims of America’s Secret Thalidomide Scandal is published by Harper Collins
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