Thalidomide Is Withdrawn After Birth Defects

In 1957, the West German pharmaceutical manufacturer Chemie Grünenthal introduced thalidomide under the trade name Contergan. The firm's own researchers had synthesized and patented the compound in 1954. Advertised as a safe remedy for tension, anxiety, and sleeplessness, the drug was also aggressively promoted to pregnant women suffering from morning sickness. Crucially, the compound entered commercial distribution across forty-six countries without prior safety testing on pregnant women.

Within a few years of its launch, obstetricians and pediatricians began encountering an unprecedented surge in severe congenital disabilities. The substance acted as a potent teratogen during early embryonic growth, causing catastrophic interference if ingested between the twentieth and thirty-sixth day of gestation. It produced dysmelia, amelia, and phocomelia, an abnormality characterized by shortened or absent limbs, alongside malformations of the heart, eyes, ears, and internal organs. An estimated ten thousand to twenty thousand infants were affected worldwide, and infant mortality among the most severely affected may have reached forty percent.