Today in history
13.12.1967: Thalidomide bill of indictment
The sleeping pill and tranquilliser Thalidomide went onto the market in 1957. In Germany it was possible to buy it without a prescription. The drug soon became popular at home and abroad, but then the unimaginable occurred.
“The assistant doctors who were a bit older said: ‘Just imagine, another child has been born without any arms and legs’”, Professor Wolfgang Stille, who was working as a young doctor in a hospital in Frankfurt recalled.
All over the world children were born without limbs. Ear and eye defects were also common. To begin with, the doctors were at a loss to explain why. The families felt that they were left to cope on their own. “At that time we were really running the gauntlet. We lived in a small village. The people had the cheek to haul me out of the car to see what my disability looked like,” Petra Linnen, a thalidomide victim said.
The search for the cause of the deformities got off to a slow start although first suspicions had arisen in 1958. In 1961 a Hamburg doctor, Widukind Lenz, finally came up with an explanation. He had determined that the mothers of the disabled children had taken thalidomide. Yet to begin with the German chemicals giant “Chemie Grünenthal”, who produced thalidomide refused to withdraw the highly profitable drug from the market.
Gradually the extent of the medical catastrophe became clear. In Germany approximately 2,500 children were born with impairments and about 12,000 babies worldwide. The public prosecutor’s office investigated the matter. It dealt with the issue of the culpability of the company that had produced the drug. Should the drug ever have been allowed onto the market? And should the company have withdrawn it earlier?
Chemie-Grünenthal did not consider itself guilty. The company’s legal advisers tried everything to prevent a trial. The public prosecutor’s enquiries spanned a period of six and a half years. The trial ultimately took place in 1968. Nine managing executives of the Chemie-Grünenthal company were accused. There was an unparalleled amount of interest in the trial. The court hearing took place in the canteen of a mine near Aachen in order to accommodate the huge number journalists and visitors.
It was questionable from the start whether these gargantuan proceedings would ever be brought to a conclusion. One expert report was followed by the next and the defence fundamentally disputed the question whether the deformities were caused by thalidomide.
In the end the case was settled out of court. Chemie Grünenthal paid DM 110 million into a fund. A pension has been paid to thalidomide victims from this fund. They receive approximately 500 Euros per month.
Post Script: Thalidomide is in use again, almost unnoticed by the public. In Germany cancer and Aids patients have been treated with thalidomide on a trial basis since the mid 1990s. And the World Health Organisation recommends the agent for the treatment of leprosy. Hence the thalidomide agent is being used particularly in the developing countries. The prescription of the drug to pregnant women is strictly forbidden yet this ruling is not always observed. Consequently a number of children in Brazil have once again been born without arms and legs as the doctors had not warned the mothers of the risks involved when taking the drug.
