Google Images “Thalidomide Babies”
Take a quick look.
Another thing I only learned of because of “We Didn’t Start the Fire”
Definitely good to reflect back on mistakes from over 60 years ago when a drug was given in two clinical trials with tragic consequences.
Interesting though that if one is hunting for examples of problems in the drug review process in the US, one has to go back so many decades. If the process is so bad, no doubt there are plentiful recent examples of widespread problems, yes?
That’s a particularly apt comparison. Here’s why:
Like a lot of compounds, Thalidomide is “chiral”, or “handed”. There are two versions of the molecule that are mirror images of each other. It’s thought that only one of these “mirror images” caused the problems with Thalidomide (there’s more to it, but that’s the gist.)
Drug companies and researchers are all over chirlatity today, largely as a result of the Thalidomide mess, but in 1957, when the drug was approved for use in Europe, they didn’t really pay any attention to “handedness”...it was known to exist, but not thought to be important. Now we know, and 10,000 people in Europe and the UK paid the price.
So, here’s the question: what don’t we know about mRNA used as a vaccine? This will be widely distributed, so we’ll know some of the answers to that pretty soon, and probably know a lot more after a couple of years.
For myself, I’m not at all unhappy that I won’t be in the first or second tranche of people eligible for the shot. I’ll evaluate the risks at that point after a few million folks have offered up their arms as test subjects.