What is thalidomide and what was the Contergan scandal?
THE horrific affects of the Thalidomide drug still live on to this day.
It was given to pregnant women in the 1950s to alleviate morning sickness.
What is thalidomide?
Thalidomide was a sedative drug discovered at the end of the 50s, which caused a worldwide tragedy.
The drug has been prescribed to many pregnant women in order to relieve pregnancy nausea.
It was drug that was developed in the 1950s by the West German pharmaceutical company Chemie Grünenthal GmbH.
It was originally intended as a sedative or tranquiliser, but was soon used for treating a wide range of other conditions, including colds, flu, nausea and, as mentioned, morning sickness in pregnant women.
The drug caused babies to be born with deformed limbs[/caption]What was the Contergan scandal?
Thalidomide was introduced in 1956 and was marketed by the German pharmaceutical company Chemie Grünenthal under the trade name.
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the use of thalidomide with preganat women resulted in “biggest man‐made medical disaster ever”,
It was later found that thalidomide caused irreversible damages to the fetus and thousands of children were born with severe congenital malformations.
Many of them did not survive more than a few days after they were born.
This resulted in more than 10,000 children born with a range of severe deformities, such as phocomelia, as well as thousands of miscarriages
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Is Thalidomide available in the UK today.
Short answer to this is no.
Thalidomide forced governments and medical authorities to review their pharmaceutical licencing policies.
As a result, changes were made to the way drugs were marketed, tested and approved both in the UK and across the world.
One key change was that drugs intended for human use could no longer be approved purely on the basis of animal testing.
Drug trials for substances marketed to pregnant women also had to provide evidence that they were safe for use in pregnancy.