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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 ...
In 1952, thalidomide was synthesised by Chemical Industry Basel, but was found "to have no effect on animals" and was discarded on that basis. [40] In 1957, it was acquired by Chemie Grünenthal in Germany. [40] The German company had been established as a soap maker after World War II ended, to address the urgent market need for antibiotics. [41]
In November 1961, thalidomide was thus taken off the market. [11] [12] Thalidomide caused severe deformities in the children of women who took the drug during pregnancy. Experts estimate that the drug thalidomide led to the death of about 2,000 children and serious birth defects in more than 10,000 children, about 5,000 of them in West Germany.
July 2024 was the hottest month ever recorded in Death Valley, with a mean daily average temperature over the month of 108.5 °F (42.5 °C). [34] Four major mountain ranges lie between Death Valley and the ocean, each one adding to an increasingly drier rain shadow effect, and in 1929, 1953, and 1989, no rain was recorded for the whole year. [20]
Opioids are among the world's oldest known drugs. [13] [14] Use of the opium poppy for medical, recreational, and religious purposes can be traced to the 4th century BCE, when Hippocrates wrote about it for its analgesic properties, stating, "Divinum opus est sedare dolores." ("Divine work is the easing of pain") [15]
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.
Frances Kathleen Oldham Kelsey CM (née Oldham; July 24, 1914 – August 7, 2015) was a Canadian-American [1] pharmacologist and physician. As a reviewer for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), she refused to authorize thalidomide for market because she had concerns about the lack of evidence regarding the drug's safety. [2]
Widukind Lenz (4 February 1919, Eichenau, Bavaria – 25 February 1995) was a distinguished German pediatrician, medical geneticist and dysmorphologist who was among the first to recognize the thalidomide syndrome in 1961 and alert the world to the dangers of limb and other malformations due to the mother's exposure to this drug during pregnancy.