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Asked by kimberley to Hermine, Katy, Laura, Nathalie, Paula on 19 Jun 2010 in Categories: General.
Question: what is the name of the pill that made peoples children come out disabled
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Laura Dixon answered on 18 Jun 2010:
It was thalidimide in birth control pills that made children born deformed. Did you know they tested the pills on rabbits – who aren’t affected by thalidimide – first then approved them for people. Shows some flaws in drug testing on animals
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Katy Mee answered on 18 Jun 2010:
i think you mean thalidomide – it was used as a sedative but doctors didn’t realised it caused massive birth defects. Babies were generally born with very short limbs or no limbs at all. Pretty tragic really
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Nathalie Pettorelli answered on 18 Jun 2010:
Hi Kimberley,
That does not look like a good pill! As you can see, it wasn’t a specific pill but a substance used in these pills that was toxic – all sorted now, so no worry 😉
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Paula Salgado answered on 18 Jun 2010:
Hi Kimberley
It was called thalidomide and had been developed to stop pregnant women feeling sick and nausea in the morning. They didn’t do all the tests they should have made before giving it to people and only after many babies bourned with physical disabilities did they realise it was causing mutations in the babies… A story were not all care was taken and all safety tests carried out.
Nowadays, safety tests for new drugs are much, much more strict and this kind of thing won’t happen again hopefully. :-/
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Comments
Paula commented on :
Just to clarify one thing: it was developed as a sedative, but that’s not how it was used on pregnant women. They found out that it helped with morning sickness to – and started prescribing it without having any idea of the side effects…