Australian woman wins multi-million Thalidomide payout from Diageo

Reuters ^ | Wed Jul 18, 2012 2:36am EDT | (Reporting by Aicha Marhfour; Editing by Daniel Magnowski)

[Olog-hai]

An Australian woman has won a multi-million dollar payout from UK company Diageo PLC, the local distributor of the drug Thalidomide that caused birth defects in thousand of babies around the world in the 1960s, her lawyers said on Wednesday.

Lynette Rowe, 50, was born without arms and legs after her mother Wendy took Thalidomide for a month while pregnant. At the time the drug was prescribed as a treatment for morning sickness.

The settlement with Rowe could pave the way for more than 100 other Thalidomide victims in Australia and New Zealand to receive compensation through a class action, the law firm Slater & Gordon said. …

[autumnraine]

My aunt lost her first child (one and only boy) at 6 months and he was so ‘bad’, they wouldn’t let her see him.

Flash forward 30 years later in the 90’s and I was pregnant with my first child. Morning sickness was really dragging me down and my elderly aunt says “Get your doctor to give you that morning sickness pill.” I had to explain to her what it was and what it caused and for the first time she heard about how horrible it was and put two and two together...

She lived in a VERY rural area and the only doctor in town certainly wouldn’t admit a medicine he gave out like candy to local moms caused these birth defects and she never knew. So sad.

[exDemMom]

Are you sure she took thalidomide? It never was approved for use in the US as a morning sickness drug.

According to the wiki article, an unknown amount of thalidomide tablets were distributed to physicians in the US as part of a clinical testing program. Still, the US was not as affected as Europe.

[nonsporting]

I thought the thalidomide problems appeared in the mid 50s. I remember seeing one such victim in ‘57 or ‘58.

[cameraeye]

The photograph of the little boy at the chalk board with no arms, well it's haunting. Hope this person uses the money to make life easier.

[dayglored]

In the 60’s when I was in middle school I knew a kid who had stubby arms with two buds at the ends, no hands, and a severe limp, one leg shorter than the other. A lot like the kid at the blackboard in that pic. In those years I didn’t connect that with Thalidomide, but years later I remembered him and the penny dropped. He got by surprisingly well, considering, and had a real strong “Can Do!” attitude. Nobody made fun of him or anything like that, we just accepted that he was different. Man, he played kickball like a champ. Couldn’t throw it, but he was our star kicker, and he ran like the wind even with the limp. Smart, too. Hope he did well in later life; he sure deserved to.