Volume 48, Number 8 · May 17, 2001
Thalidomide Comes Back
By Richard Horton
Dark Remedy: The Impact of Thalidomide and Its Revival as a Vital Medicine
Trent Stephens and Rock Brynner
Perseus, 228 pp., $26.00
'We will never accept a world with thalidomide in it,' wrote Randolph Warren on July 17, 1998, the day after the US Food and Drug Administration licensed a chemical that had, between 1956 and 1962, caused birth defects in as many as twelve thousand children. Warren heads the Thalidomide Victims' Association of Canada. He was born with lower-body phocomelia after his mother was given thalidomide for nausea during pregnancy: the bones of his legs failed to develop, leaving his feet to articulate directly with his pelvis. His arms are shorter than usual, and each of his hands has only four fingers. Randolph Warren describes himself as a thalidomider.
Review, 4301 words
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