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Feet of a baby born to a mother who had taken thalidomide while pregnant. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the use of thalidomide in 46 countries was prescribed to women who were pregnant or who subsequently became pregnant, and consequently resulted in the "biggest anthropogenic medical disaster ever," with more than 10,000 children born with a range of severe deformities, such as ...
This regulation was influenced by the results of 1950 use of thalidomide in Western Europe for pregnant women. They were prescribed the sedative thalidomide, which was inaccurately marketed as a morning sickness treatment. Women gave birth to more than 12,000 infants born with deformities due to effects from the drug in utero.
Primodos was a hormone-based pregnancy test, produced by Schering AG, and used in the 1960s and 1970s that consisted of two pills that contained norethisterone (as acetate) and ethinylestradiol. [ 1 ] [ 2 ] It detected pregnancy by inducing menstruation in women who were not pregnant.
Thalidomide was used as treatment for cancers, leprosy and HIV, however, the drug was extensively used for the treatment of nausea in pregnant women in the late 1950s and early 1960s until it became apparent in the 1960s that it resulted in severe birth defects.
Wonder Drug: The Secret History of Thalidomide in America and Its Hidden Victims is a nonfiction book authored by Jennifer Vanderbes and published by Random House in 2023. It tells the story of how Frances Oldham Kelsey of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) found flaws in thalidomide research.
McBride published a letter in The Lancet, in December 1961, noting a large number of birth defects in children of patients who were prescribed thalidomide, [9] after a midwife named Sister Pat Sparrow first suspected the drug was causing birth defects in the babies of patients under his care at Crown Street Women's Hospital in Sydney. [10]
In 1950, to conduct a simulation of a biological warfare attack, the U.S. Navy sprayed large quantities of the bacterium Serratia marcescens – considered harmless at the time – over the city of San Francisco during a project called Operation Sea-Spray. Numerous citizens contracted pneumonia-like illnesses, and at least one person died as a ...
Thalidomide is a known human teratogen and carries an extremely high risk of severe, life-threatening birth defects if administered or taken during pregnancy. [6] It causes skeletal deformities such as amelia (absence of legs and/or arms), absence of bones, and phocomelia (malformation of the limbs).