About a year ago I saw a teevee program on "thalidomide children" and how they live today. Remember the drug: Thalidomide, a.k.a. Thallic Glutarimide, K 17, Contergan, Ectiluran, Glutanon, Imidan, Kevadon, Lulamin, Quietoplex, Softenon, Tensival, Valgraine, Neosedyn, Neurosedyn, Neurodin... You might have heard of it... I must admit that the following is not extremely well researched, but seems to me to be pretty unbiased.

It all started in October 1957. It was a pretty slow month, newswise. Crisis in Algeria. Little Rock. Chemie Grünenthal releases a new groundbreaking tranquilizer, a "sleeping pill" named Contergan, with the active substance Thalidomide, after more than 2 years of clinical tests.

Contergan had a series of advantages over other sleeping pills at the time; barbiturates could be lethal in overdoses and was known to be addictive, whereas Contergan was tested on lab animals and "proven" to be of an extremely nontoxic kind, as well as totally non-addictive. The non-toxicity was proven "the hard way" when a 21 year old man tried to OD. He ate 144 Contergan Forte pills, 15 full grams of Thalidomide. He survived with no visible after effects.

Contergan was a hit in Germany! The "Deutsche Wunder" in full effect, dig? 1961, Contergan for 1.5 million Deutsche Marks was sold, making it the sleeping pill of the century, "Das Schlafmittel des Jahrhunderts". Between a half and one million individuals was estimated to have used the drug. Someone is bound to have a reaction.

And quite a few had. (The inventor of the drug, by the by, was the former Chefarzt at the institute for typhoid research in Krakow during W.W.II, Heinrich Mückter. At the Nürnberg trials, he was accused of prison experiments at Buchenwald, but was acquitted. Go figure.) At the end of 1959, Grünenthal recieves a report on a possible connection between Contergan and polyneuritis, inflammation of several nerves at the same time. The effects of polyneuritis range from itchy feelings to numbness and pain.

During the spring of 1961, Grünenthal is in court over 12 different cases of polyneuritis. Autumn 1961, it is no longer prescription free in Germany. Still, Thalidomide was at its heyday sold in eleven European, seven African, seventeen Asian and eleven American countries. But the worst has yet to come.

July 3, 1961 a Finnish doctor sends a letter to Grünenthal asking 2 questions:

Q1: Does the thalidomide pass thru the placenta?
A1: Unknown
Q2. Could the drug damage the foetus if it passes thru the placenta?
A2. Not likely.

But 1) It passed thru the placenta and 2) It did damage the foetus. Severely.

November 15, Doctor Lenz at the Hamburg University Hospital called Mückter, telling him he had 14 documented instances of birth defects and a possible connection to Contergan usage. Mückter deadpanned, shrugging his shoulders. Hundreds of cases of rare birth defects had been showing in West Germany since 1957: no rectum, strange and massive defects on limbs, heart defects etc.

The symptom was called phocomelia, from the Greek "phokos", seal, and "melia", limb. Seal limb. Starting to ring a bell? After a strange period of hostilites between Doctor Lenz and the Grünenthal posse, Welt am Sonntag publishes an article on the subject. Then Grünenthal pulls the plug on Contergan.

But nothing is really known at the time. The effects have a nice 9 month delay. Contergan was really popular, and recommended during pregnancy, since barbiturates is known to be addictive et cetera. In the advertisments, Contergan was hailed as being "especially suitable during pregnancies".

In Sweden, Thalidomine was sold under the name of Neurosedyn. in December 1961, Swedish pharmacological firm Astra sends a letter to all Swedish MDs, stating that Neurosedyn might be hazardous to the foetus. It is interesting to note that more than 90 "seal children" had been born in Sweden by then, but no one saw the connexion. The same was true in Germany, England, Belgium, USA, Japan, Canada and other countries. Children with heavy defects, mostly phocomelia, was born everywhere. Hands om shoulders, feet on hips.

The thing was that these defects where caused by a few hundred milligrams, 2 measly pills. Pretty potent shit. After the shit had hit the fan, thousands of pregnant mothers all over the world suffered all kinds of mental breakdowns. imagine knowing that you ate Contergan during your pregnancy. If you ate it during the period when the foetus developed arms, no arms. Or during the period legs were developed, no legs. If you ate them for a period: no arms, no legs and maybe worse. March, 1962, Neurosedyn is forbidden in Sweden.

It's hard to estimate global numbers, but in Sweden 153 children were born with thalidomide-embryopathy. 100 survived. I don't know how many are still alive. As I said, about a year ago I saw a teevee program on Neurosedyne children in Sweden. There was an intervier with a little guy with no arms. He was married, and had two children. He changed diapers on the smallest one. He, too, lived in fear that one of his children would be born with no arms or no legs.

In Peter Milligan, Brendan McCarthy and Carol Swains brilliant and censored graphic novel Skin, the main character, Martin 'Atchet, is an early 70s skinhead with phocomelia. He is a skin, for good or bad. He hits girls, he wants to fuck. He is no good. At the end of the book, he breaks into the library, reading up on the thalidomide scandal, certainly one of the biggest global scandals of the 60s.

He retaliates: breaking into the offices of the British manufacturer, he uses a hatchet to cut off the limbs of the company CEO, tying them to his own stumps and jumping out of the window. End. Strange thing is, that here in Lund, Sweden, there was another skinhead thalidomide victim. And bouth of Skins authors had met guys like that, little skinheads.

But now the punch line. Thalidomide is supposedly STILL SOLD in parts of the world. The program showed 6-7 year old children with typical thalidomide defects, crawling around in the gutters of the Rio de Janeiro slum. God oh God I cried. I was so fucking disgusted and angry I wanted to puke. What else can I say?

The pharma-industrial complex is Satan. Welcome to Hades, motherfucker.

Sources:
Skin (Milligan, McCarthy, Swain, 1992)
Veckojournalen(Various issues, 1962 to 1969)

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Fuel:
Made me cry: Bön för Tjernobyl by Svetlana Aleksijevitj and Fax from Sarajevo by Joe Kubert | Made me headbang: Free Satpal Ram (Live) Asian Dub Foundation | Made me sing: Brother Is Dead... but fly is gone by Thee Headcoats | Made me quirky: A by Pan Sonic | Made me happy: Latest Speak issue, John Gilmore's Laid Bare, the TV set a friend gave me, but broke down after a week, Larry Brown's Father and Son, Agoraphobe's Noise, revisiting antiorp, talking to a friend on the phone, meeting another friend returning from a N.Y. trip | Made me maudlin': beer and whiskey and The Supremes and a dear friends move to another city | Made me glad II: Finsta's cool street art tour de force | Made me drunk: Red wine, beer and white russians | Made me eat: Cumin, fried in the pan, then ground, green tabasco, cabbage dolmades, Juje kebab, cod with hard fried eggplant, basil sauce and potato/celery cake | Made me boogie: Bob Log III, BW Johnson, RL Burnside, T-Model Ford