Doomed to Fail - Ep 141 - Look for The Helpers: Thalidomide Babies

Episode Date: October 1, 2024

In the 1960s, thousands of babies worldwide were born with physical abnormalities, and the culprit was a 'wonder drug' given to mothers who had morning sickness. Pharmaceutical companies promoting the drug Thalidomide didn't do enough testing on pregnant women before marketing their product directly to them (well, legal testing anyway; there was most likely testing in Concentration Camps during WWII).In the US, there were only 17 documented cases thanks to the tireless work of the FDA's Frances Oldham Kelsey, who refused to approve Thalidomide without further documentation.In the UK, Health Minister Enoch Powell took the documentation at face value and left the drug on the shelves even after he knew of the issues. Families were left alone to care for their children until Harold Evans of The Sunday Times fought a moral campaign across Britain to get them their due compensation and ongoing support.Learn more about this dark chapter in Pharmacological history with us this week on Doomed to Fail. Sources:Frances Oldham Kelsey, the Fda, and the Battle Against Thalidomide by Cheryl Krasnick Warshn- https://www.josephbeth.com/book/9780197632543 Attacking the Devil - Harold Evans and The Last Nazi War Crime - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HSlQCR3lGU“Wonder Drug” draws back the veil on thalidomide’s hidden American victims https://harvardpublichealth.org/policy-practice/thalidomide-the-untold-american-story-in-wonder-drug/Thalidomide: the story they suppressed - https://www.thetimes.com/article/thalidomide-the-story-they-suppressed-xqpwccdff  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gr%C3%BCnenthal  Join our Founders Club on Patreon to get ad-free episodes for life! patreon.com/DoomedtoFailPodWe would love to hear from you! Please follow along! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod  Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod Email: [e-mail] 

It's a matter of the people of the state of California versus Hortonthal James Simpson, case number B.A.019. And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your family. Let's see. Let's go ahead and knock out the introduction and then get into why we're releasing late and why I sound like I'm dying. um hello everyone welcome to doom to fail with the podcast that brings you history's most notorious disasters and epic failures twice a week every week i am taylor joined by far as a day late okay so taylor i went to pliedel carman on friday and then i was supposed to connect through mexico city airport on sunday for layover back to Austin

and have you been to Mexico City airport? No. It is like the only way I could describe it is like the movie Viverium if it was made in an airport like you just go in circles there's no signage nobody's helpful

it's eventually we got to our gate and we got there like two or three minutes before the close up board which was 15 minutes before departure and then it was like yeah we already closed the gate and then right behind behind us for like five six other women that come running up and they're like like the plane's still here it's still within the 15 minute window it's like no I already closed it that means you can't get on oh my god it sucks it's the worst so then we go talk to

the airline and they're like yeah there's no options you can buy another round of tickets They're about $600 a piece one way for tomorrow. It's just like, ludicrous. Yeah, I've been up since 5 o'clock this morning, like at the gate being like, there's no way I'm like leaving this gate. Like they're not. Oh, my God. It was, it was a rough, it's been a rough couple of days. And it's still ongoing because now our luggage is in Mexico City.

And we're not there. Yeah. That's a disaster. I'm sorry. so anyways that is how my mood is right now um how are you yeah i'm spent just discombobulated as well we went to palm springs which is just 45 minutes away this weekend on saturday night to visit our friend and they had like little Airbnb and we had a really nice dinner and then flores got a cough and i like i was not able to sleep because it was really hot and like the the AC just

like i think the AC like lowered a lot like automatically in the middle the night you know so i was like trying to fall asleep and florence was coughing at five o'clock in the morning one was like we have to leave we have to get florence her inhalers at home um so we like packed up and left and we just like texted our friend and we're like we just left in the middle of the night and then so yesterday just confused you know like tired and confused yeah when you like we're not in your usual routine it's so especially the older you get you know like your adaptability to it is just so much more limited but anyways we're here now let's go ahead and dive into some stories for this week am i going first no

can I go first? Yes, you can go first. If like last time you went first and then you shouldn't have, so I did, like, whatever, doesn't matter. Can I go? You can go. I feel ready. So, I'm going to tell you

ours, another story that can be found in Billy Joel's weed and start the fire that I have been wanting to talk about for a while. I'm going to close a bunch of my computer tab so that this works um have you heard about the children of the little mid the little mid i'm going to say it a bunch of time so i've got to get good at it no so a thilomide baby who you may recognize if you

googled it is a baby that was born in the 1950s um or 60s usually the early 60s who has no arms or legs um and some other things potentially could be wrong with it but mostly it's the people who have, like, their hands out of their, like, arm sockets. Oh, yeah. Okay. I know, yeah, I didn't know. I mean, it's got to be a condition. I never looked into it.

So. So it's okay. So it's pretty crazy. And it's actually not, it's a condition that is caused by a medication that the mother took while she was pregnant. So let me tell you a little bit about it. To research this, I watched a documentary, um, called Attacking the Devil, Harold Evans and the last Nazi war crime.

And I read the book. Francis Oldham Kelsey, the FDA, and the battle against thalidomide. So they're definitely going to tell you about the UK and the U.S. And what happened? Okay. Stop reading the Wikipedia page and just let me tell you. So we'll talk about what solidamide was and what it did. What happened in the U.S.?

What happened in the U.K. So there's a thread here that I think we should talk about at some other time, like the formation of the FDA and the reasons why you have to have prescriptions for things, you know, and things like that. Because like 99% of human history, it was just like people in the woods trying not to die, you know, and you would be like, oh, this mushroom can help you. This mushroom kills you, you know. Yeah, you need someone to know that.

Well, yeah. But there's a regulation around it. It's just like whatever, because it's like in your village or whatever. You're in your town in London or to sell you. eelskins and, you know, this tonic. So people are dying all the time. But then, you know, as we have learned things, it starts to get very chemical heavy, you know. So there's people who can actually make things that help people, that help diseases that

do all these things, but they need to be regulated to make sure that they're safe. And it needs to be like the right amount of trials and the right amount of data behind things so that you can't just, and also things need to have a prescription. And so you can't just like, you know, buy seven, under oxycontin and then hope for the best, you know? Right, right. So there are also going to be people who are desperate for help who want to try experimental drugs and experimental things.

That will happen over and over again. I feel like one of the stories I told you, there was a doctor who, oh gosh, I can't remember who I think it was in the Henry Adelaq story where he had cancer. When he was dying, he wanted them to take out his cancer. And potentially that surgery would have killed him, but he was like, use me as an experiment. You know, so there's like people who've wanted to do that. But sometimes people have to say no to a certain drug to say, like, you know, this can't be on the market. People can't have this.

Another thing that we're not going to talk about today, but that is a part of this story is there's, you know, a ton of animal testing in like a very terrible way that happened, like in the beginning of testing and a lot of human testing in very terrible ways, like testing malaria drugs on prisoners. and, you know, the Tuskegee trials where they were, yeah, where they were doing things with syphilis and all these terrible things. Not the airman, but it was in the same area, but they were like giving black men syphilis and not helping them, essentially, to see what different drugs would do even after they didn't, it didn't really matter. Like the testing was over. So there's a lot of that. But it's also a lot of like off the books, human testing done by sales reps. I didn't think about what a weird job of pharmaceutical. rep is, but you try to bribe a doctor to using your medicine. Yeah, it's crazy. It's wild. And it's

been like that since like the 40s and 50s. So, I mean, essentially, and they said this in the book about Francis Kelsey and it is something that you see now. It's like they come in to talk to your doctor for 10 minutes. They give you a bunch of trials of a pill. They like bring you snacks and like bring you things, give you things like, you know, notepads and pens and all that stuff. And then they leave. And they don't really take track, keep track of the trials. at least in the 50s and 60s, they weren't keeping track of the trials. And then, like, then you have, at least in America, you have ads for these drugs. So you could open up a newspaper.

There's a 10-page ad for this drug that's going to be a miracle drug for you. So you ask your doctor about it. And he's like, I don't know, I met this guy six months ago. He brought me a pack of cigarettes. I guess you should try it. You know, so it's like impossible for them to know everything. But it's just like, this should be a little more complicated than that. But it's a weird thing.

I think, I mean, if you've seen any of the. movies or series or shows about like the oxy cotton phrase like it was basically just that it was like get people who were really good looking and have them buy stuff for the doctors and show up and take them on free vacation it's kind of it's kind of insane insane do you remember wasn't it in one of those things where they were like had like a song about selling oxy cotton or something yeah yeah it's a jingle yeah i hate it um but imagine that We are on Earth, and World War II has just ended. So put yourself in that thing.

So knowing what we know, talking a little bit about medicine, you're on Earth, World War II just ended. And there's some things that are happening. Most people are depressed because we've just gone through a war, especially in Europe, everything's destroyed, a lot of people are depressed. Lots of people are afraid of nuclear fallout. So we're going to start doing Cold War activities. People start getting, have a lot of anxiety. And some Nazis have just completed some of the most horrifying human tests of all time. And they're going to, like, solely start getting out of jail.

They're not going to be in jail for that long. Some of them are going to go to South America and never be accountable for their crimes. So they've done things that is, like, just horrified. We haven't talked about them in detail. I'm sure we will someday, but just terrible things. So thalidomide is a medicine that comes from Germany. It's marketed as, it was marketed as an antidepressant and a cure for morning sickness. And sometimes the cure is for morning sickness in this time.

We're like, well, if you're passed out, then you're not nauseous. That does actually work for a lot of things. You know, like that did, that did cure my sadness that I just slept for seven days. Perfect. Yeah, that's fine. It came from a company called Kemi Grunenthal, which is still a company. It's called Grunthal. It still is active in Germany.

But Kemi Grunthal became a company because a bunch of not. Nazis bought Jewish companies during the Aryanization laws. And we've talked about those before, but essentially, like, Jewish people couldn't own any companies. So Nazis and Germans would buy their companies for, like, very cheap and start to, like, grow a portfolio. Right. So after the war, in, when they were filing patents for thalidomide, it took them about eight

weeks to get the patent through, which is, like, way too fast. if they were actually testing it post-war, they were definitely doing testings during World War II in the concentration camps of thalidomide and things that were like it, like other chemicals and medicines that they were making. Right. In 1938, they started to make pesticides for other reasons, and they saw that they started to make people convulse,

and that's when nerve gas got invented. And you've heard of, like, sarin gas? I have. I don't know what it does. So it's like the nerve agent that, just like you know you lose control of your body and like that is like you know chemical warfare why you'd have to like have the masks and all that stuff because like then they just shoot you so they just like they come in they're wearing their masks you let out the the sarin gas everybody on the battlefield you know uh is basically convulsing because it's attacking their

nerves and then um then you can kill them or they die from the from the gas sarin gas is spelled s a rn and it is spelled that because it's named after the the initials of the men who made it So they took their initials. There's Gerhard Schroeder, Otto Ombrose, Gerhard Ritter, and Hans Juergen, Wunderlanda, and they took their, the S-A-R-I-N. Yes. And anyway, they use their initials to make it, which is terrible because it killed a lot of people. Otto Ambrose is, he was in Bergen-Belsen, I believe, like one of the camps, just like doing terrible things to people.

They called him the devil's chemist. and I'm sure we could talk about things that he did in particular, but he is one of the people who started the nerve gas and after the war, he ended up working at Kemi Grudenthal and Dow chemicals. Like, they just wanted scientists.

They're all evil. They did an episode on Dow Chemical. They killed like thousands of Indians because they wouldn't maintain the chemical plant. Yeah. All that industrial stuff feels kind of like bribe, scammy, and kind of like a little bit

broken. Yeah. Yeah, it feels gross. Um, so, but because they made the nerve gas that makes you convulse, Hitler wanted an antidote to it. So the opposite of making your nerves convulse is to, like, destimulate your nerves. Technically. Yeah, I'm not a doctor, but you know what I mean. I'm making hand gestures. Like I even understand what a nerve is. Okay. Um, so while they were doing that, trying to find anti-convulsive things, um, they, they invented thalidomide. It's stops nerve endings from like activating. It also makes you a bit high, which is a bonus to anything, really. So again, there's no way that could have tested it the way that they said that they did when they had, when it went to market in West Germany and in Europe after the

war. There was one woman who in the documentary I watched who said that her brother-in-law was liberating Bergen-Belsen and he saw babies with the Lillomide deformities. so I'm sure they used it there you know and that's like part of the reason they said they did it also like they knew what it would do and so what are what are the deformities what does a thalidomide person look like and like how many are there you already go over why the people took this stuff I'll tell you I'll tell you yeah yeah I mean mostly they didn't know and it made their morning sickness go away the doctor was like this is a oh that's what it was it was a medicine for morning sickness got yeah yeah yeah and they were like you'll be fine this perfect and then they found out later and then even after they knew they didn't get rid of it right away so Taylor when you went through this when you were going through this did you not see the obvious thread between like the COVID vaccine uproars and this you mean like not trusting or that's because it was like made so quickly yeah like the fact that we like just implicitly are trustworthy of like the FDA and of like doctors when everything we've said so far is like these

groups are all kind of crooked they are all kind of crooked but I definitely am pro vaccine like it didn't take that long because we didn't start from the beginning you know no I know I'm just saying so yeah but I obviously got multiple backs and boosters at the time when people would bring up like being anti-vax you're crazy and then after a while I was like I was like we just I'll just agree to inject some shit into our bodies that, like, hasn't been around very long, hasn't been done before. And we're just like, yeah, it's fine. We'll just do it. And then when I saw John Legend doing a commercial, like, he did a commercial for the vaccine.

And I was like, oh, my God. Like, what have I done? But like, whatever, we're past, I'm past it. It's already been done. Whatever ailments I'm going to have because of it. If I do, it's already over with, but whatever. Yeah. We shouldn't trust medicine just because they're doctors.

That's true. And I think that that's interesting. because that makes me feel very conflicted because, like, do your own research and, like, maybe talk to two doctors. Don't go on the internet. Right, right. You know what I mean?

Like, don't talk to your friend, talk to two doctors or three and then see, maybe. So, yes, that was the next thing I was going to say. Moms are prescribed or given samples of thalidomide for morning sickness, which has never really been researched. Like, it has been now, but for most of time, you know, like they didn't give a shit. They were like, women have babies anyway.

And sometimes they're just women being hysterical, you know, which is not true because the boarding sickness is real. But whatever. So it didn't matter how much thalidomide you took. It mattered when you took it in your pregnancy. So it messes with nerves. And for a lot of science time, there was a thought that the placenta, which is like the sack around the baby, was a barrier so that whatever the mom did would not affect. the baby, which is ridiculous. It's not made of lead. It's made of like gross stuff. Like it's not, how could that I just feel like it's obvious. Does everything go through the

umbilical cord from the mom? Yes. Yes. It feels super obvious that whatever the mom does is something that affects the baby. But for a long time, they didn't know that or they didn't research it, they didn't care, and they thought that the baby was protected in the placenta, which it is not. And

so when a mom mom would take thalidomide. Usually they would take it in the first trimester because that's when morning sickness is the worst. And it would interfere with the nerves and the development of the baby. So you can tell when a mother took thalidomide based on the deformities of the child. So if you took it in day 20 to 24 after conception, so in your third to fourth week of pregnancy, you're like just pregnant, it would affect the ear development. So the child would be born without ears. If that's all you took and you stopped taking it, then that's the only thing that could have happened to your baby if you took it during that exact time.

But if you keep taking it or take it at different times, so if you take it in day 24 to 28, which is the fourth to fifth week, that is the arms. So a lot of the babies had no arms or deformed arms, and that was because moms are taking it in the fourth to fifth week, which makes sense because that's a good time where you realize that you're pregnant and you're starting to feel bad. Right. Again, if she stopped taking it then and only took it during that time, then it would be only the arms. So if she had not taken it during days 20 to 24, then the baby would, the ears would be okay.

But then the next couple days, if she took it during that window, it would be the arms. The day 28 to 33 is the legs. So it doesn't matter how much she's taking, if she's taking it at all during that time, it'll be the legs. Day 34 to 36, the hands and feet. So it was the arms and you'd have like a little bit of hand coming out or like very, very like small arms, but it would be the hands that were next. And then onward, it was less likely to hurt the baby. So if you took it like after day 40, the limb defect defects decreased. So you wouldn't necessarily see it.

But a lot of other organs because it will be affected, the heart, the kidney, the eyes, the gastrointestinal tract, just a whole. whole bunch of other things that could happen. But day 20 to 36 is the time where it mattered the most if you took it any time during that time. Does that make sense? It does. It's all based on the, yeah, I mean, it totally tracks. It's all based on the development cycle, right? Yeah, exactly. Wait, so it wouldn't affect the brain? No, well, a little bit. There are, there are a couple people that I saw, like in the documentary where it did affect their brain, and they do have of like some learning disabilities, but a lot of them don't. It's just physical.

Interesting. Yeah. So the first documented little bi baby was born in Germany. He was born on Christmas Day and he had no ears. So he was like the first one. His father worked at Kimmy Grunthal and he had given his wife some pills to test them out while she had been pregnant. Globally, there were up to 10,000 little my babies in total.

More than half of them died at birth. Either because they were so, like, their organs didn't form and they were never going to live, some of them were killed, smothered, left to die in the cold by doctors and nurses. There was a man in the documentary I watched, he was a grown man. He had no arms or legs, but he was saying that when he was born, they put him in a box and left him in the corner of the room. and the doctors finally heard him crying. They were like, oh, I guess it's alive.

They were just going to leave him. So I think I heard that the first person ever killed as part of like the Nazi, you know, whatever there was, like it's a Holocaust. Like it was a baby like that. It was like an SS officer whose baby was born with some wild defects. And they're like, just get rid of this thing. And like, we're going to, we're going to be testing with other people anyway. ways might as well do with this baby yeah i think that this that story came up in in um in this as well because um yeah exactly that they the nazis obviously would if a baby was born with

anything wrong with it they would just kill it um there was some i think i wrote this later but there's some doctors who would just be like forget you had a baby and go home and just get pregnant again and do it again let's just forget this one you know like you can't see it like you don't want to see it things like that um there were also exposure like around the world so they definitely was in like parts of africa parts of asia but i have some numbers from europe and um the most teleno my babies were born in in in germany in west germany east germany did not approve it i feel like probably because they were busy with like dealing with that being east germany they were like trying to get heat you know like they weren't worrying about like expansey drugs so

yeah also yeah this was probably also a luxury drug, right? Yes, yes, exactly. Yes. So there are about 2,500 to 3,000 babies born in Germany. And 2,000 in the United Kingdom, Japan had anywhere from 1,000 to 1,500. Australia, New Zealand, there were 400 to 500. Canada, there were 115 or so.

Sweden, 180. Other countries in Europe, there were about 200 in total. And in the United States, there were only 17. babies affected, and I will tell you why. They're only 17 in the U.S. FDA. Yes, but in one particular person at the FDA who said no, a bunch of times. So a quick timeline of the FDA, exactly, you're exactly right.

The first federal food, drug and cosmetic act was in 1938 that replaced the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act. So the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act, I only laugh because this is ridiculous. They created it because there were people putting in. anti-free's in kids' medicine because it knocked them out. We were either so much hardier. Is this why we were hardy back then? I mean, if you survived this, you know, like, if your parents would like give you

poison, they could go to the movies or they could go out dancing, you know, then like, yeah, if you get through that, then like, you just have to, you can be, you'll be a raging alcoholic the rest of your life, but like you'll live. I mean, now we die of peanut allergies. So I don't know. I don't know. So after, so the 19th. Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act started the FDA.

And I thought it was interesting that they added cosmetics, but totally makes sense there to be regulation on stuff that you like smooth all over your skin. Because again, we're porous, like a placenta. You know, like she's going to get in there. Nice callback. You know what I mean. And this is the first time they involve chemistry. They're like, oh, we should use science in deciding what is safe and what is not safe people to have in and on their bodies.

So introducing Francis Oldham Kelsey. She is a doctor who saved the babies in the United States. She was born on July 24th, 1914. She will live to be 101. So I just wanted to reference another Billy Joel song and say sometimes it's a good die old. She was born in Canada, and a very British parents. She ended up going to Chicago for her Ph.D., and she's going to have several post-doctoral fellowships in pharmacology. Her husband is also a doctor.

He goes to South Dakota. his name is Fremont Ellis Kelsey. They married in 1943. They have two daughters. And like, they're so smart and they're very supportive of each other. So they're like the kind of couple that's like, I'll watch the kids. You go get your MD. Then you watch the kids and I'll go get my MD.

That's great. Just like all that stuff. So in the 1960s, Francis Kelsey was hired by the FDA to review new medicines. So each new medicine that would be asked to be approved by the FDA has a go through an application process called an NDA, which is a new drug application. It can be anything from like a little to a lot of research. And sometimes it can be things like, I'm a doctor and I think that this pill that is in, that my friend uses in Italy can help my patient that has this very specific thing. My patient has agreed to try it. Can I try it? You know, so it's like you, just like one person trying a thing. And sometimes

it's like these huge companies that are like we've invested you know millions and billions of dollars in creating this drug we want it to be able to be sold in the u.s so what they look for is like clinical trials animal testing and like there's definitely a lot to talk about with animal testing but did you just everyone like a doctor death are you talking about jack of workian no there's like a podcast has called Dr. Death. It talks about different doctors who, um, who was like messed up and like just did really like dangerous things. And one guy was like, like lied to the same things were tested on animals and they weren't. And it just like obviously didn't work in like a human body and like anybody at all, you know, there's like kind of wild stories. But they get all

of this research. They get these applications. When she started, there were seven full time and four part time physicians just reviewing the applications. And a lot of stuff got through that maybe shouldn't have gotten through because they would just you know you have a thousand applications at your desk and you're paid per application in some cases so you're just going to like kind of zoom through them so um the one of the first things that came across her desk when you started at the FDA was a drug called kevedon which sounds like the word abidon which is a portal into darkness from the Bible but um kevodon was thalidomide that was the name of the drug in in the US and it was being distributed by a company called Merrill and they were really they really wanted to push it for morning sickness for anxiety so they also would say things like well it what if we sold it to like just men for anxiety you know but you're like you can't control that and that's not how that works you know if anyone happened to have it these things could happen she kept sending them requests for more information but she was never satisfied that it was that it was safe um in the UK and around

Europe, they will start to make the connections between thalidomide and these deformities. By the time they do that, by the time they take it off the market in 1961, it never got into the United States. And it's because of her because she kept saying no. And even with all the pushback and like the money and all the things, she was just like, I don't feel comfortable at this. I don't think it's safe. So it didn't go through. In 1962, she was awarded the president's award for Distinguished Federal Civilian Service. There was a really key. picture of her in JFK where he's like giving her an award um yeah she would win a ton of awards she got a lot of really great fan mail um that was like in the books that i read and it was very

sweet it was like the moms being like i 100% would have taken that shit thank you for taking off the market her not giving me the opportunity you know it's like it does is put you to sleep no no it didn't that didn't just put you to sleep it would just it would just like calm me down make you a little high and you wouldn't you wouldn't be sick anymore so it didn't put you to sleep. No, no, no, I was saying, like, in the beginning, I was like, when people were studying morning sickness, they were like, let's just knock them out. Like, no one really studied it. But this, like, seemed to solve the problem. So they just were like, like, you know, sometimes like they have a drug and they're like, oh, we found out it does this thing. So

we can market it for this. You know, it was kind of like that. So she's going to get a ton of awards, a ton of mail. She did save a lot of babies. Other things that she'd work on. She works in the FDA for 45 years. She works on things like trying to stop fake sugar from entering the market. and other drugs that were not, that were not safe, but she, you know, would live, be pretty famous in, like, in the United States until her death in the 90s because of all of the work that she did, too, to stop this from happening. It was funny. As much shit as I just talked earlier about the FDA, when I was in Mexico, I did go to a Mexican pharmacy. So I was just out of curiosity.

and they had like a lot of like knockoff brand version of like drugs that like the names were familiar to us and I was like this feels risky yeah like I don't know if I want to risk to roll that kind of a dice yeah and I think there's so many things that complicated too like I don't know how does this interact with this medication or this medication or like this thing that I'm doing you know yeah that all feels it feels really it feels kind of scary to think of like and then like maybe you're the first person who ever took those two drugs together you know and like something terrible happens so it's hard to even tell you know what what it could do yeah but it also goes back to the point of like this is all human created stuff

like yeah a company invest money to create a product in this case a drug and then they do whatever they can to get that drug approved and then cram it down the throats of doctors Yeah, and like the goal initially was to stop your nerves from convulsing when you get hit with nerve gas. So I remember this from law school, which was that for the longest time, drug companies weren't allowed to advertise drugs on television or like directly to patients. It was always supposed to be this like drug company to doctor to patient kind of chain of command or whatever. whatever. Um, but what, but what they got some ruling or something where they allowed that to happen. But as a result of that, it was then the, the burden of risk of taking that drug was transferred from your doctor to you. And the way they could, they could allow that to happen was

at the end of every commercial, they had to tell you every potential thing that a doctor would tell you. So you know what the risks are. When you go in and you actually ask for the drug by name. That's why every commercial ends with it's going to cause life, death, suicide. Like, you don't even like you just thing after thing everything. Um, so wild. That's wild. I don't know that I don't know like the best way to do it.

You know? Our healthcare system is so crazy. It's wild. It's crazy. Like everyone's got their hand in the cookie jar or the fact that like I was there was some daily podcasts around how the Biden administration had renegotiated like the prices of like diabetes medication or insulin or something through

Medicare or Medicaid and how like they're only allowed to negotiate like these 10 drugs and like in a couple of years they hope they can increase that to like 20 more drugs it was like what are you talking about you're the federal government like I wonder I wonder um what the list is oh wait okay I'll get it from August 2014. So a list of drugs. Because I take, oh mine isn't on here. I take a blood sugar pill. But mine's only 54 cents a month.

Is that amazing? I don't know why like 54 cents a month. Well, probably because so many people do have to take it. Yeah. Per unit costs can be. But I mean, like, but that's like, I mean, a whole thing. We're like, you know, they'll sell an inhaler in Canada every 50 bucks. and in the U.S. is $800, you know?

Yeah. Like, that's real fucking shitty. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Okay. I never knew that this, I never knew this was anything other than like a genetic defect as opposed to like someone

taking a drug. Yeah. It's not genetic at all. And I have another, I have another bit, a bit to tell you. Yeah. About what happened in the UK. So in the UK, it was marketed as disteval from the company

distillers. So distillers was a booze company. They made Johnny Walker gin and Gordon's gin. And they bought their thalidomide directly from Kemi and Grudenthal. And they did it honestly just because they heard that drugs are going to be more popular than booze. So like we should get into drugs. I mean, they're not wrong. So it hit the shelves in 1958 in the UK. The UK health ministry. They just took the test that distillers said they did at face value. They got their test directly from Kemi Grudenthal. They didn't do any of their own testing. And they said, great, seems fine. They didn't ask for anything else the way that the FDA was asking for more. And again, it was a miracle drug's drug for mom. So, you know, the doctor would be like, oh, you feel terrible. Take a couple of these, you know,

you'll feel better. And you did. Like, you did feel better. And so this is also like, so we're in the late 50s, early 60s and you're living in like a tiny town in the UK and you maybe just get them from your from your like the town GP with the town doctor and sometimes you get them from like other people so like the 17 babies that were in the United States most of them were because like someone went to Europe and then while they were in Germany they were like oh your wife has warning sickness give for this you know yeah or they were like oh this was prescribed to me a man for my anxiety, use him anxious, why don't you take it, you know, without even thinking that like that could potentially be different for a pregnant person. So a lot of people, this started to happen

and they didn't know what was happening, obviously. So they thought that, you know, it was a genetic defect. They thought that they had done something wrong, like purpose, like something that they should have not done, they could have possibly known about, you know. They were priests that would be like, it's God's will, which is just like, fuck you. Um, and a sad thing, they don't have the exact number on it, but a lot of the dads left and they left the moms with the babies. There was a sweet mother and she said, my husband said it's me or the baby and she said he left and haven't seen him since. It was, it had been like 50 years. What's the mom supposed to do? Bash its head against the rock? Like this law still exist.

Yeah. No. Um, many were born, again, like I said, alive, but not allowed to live. So they were left out or they were smothered because they were deformed. And at the time, the Minister of Health in the UK is named Enoch Powell and looked him up and he like has a whole thing about wanting the people who were colonized by the British to leave Britain and go back to their homes. He's got a whole lot of stuff going on. But he's the one who disapproved it and didn't ask for any more tests. He also, they had tests that said that a pap smear can save lives because it can detect cancer. early, which it can. And he refused to let to let it be legalized in the UK for like

five years for no reason. He just like didn't want to. No, he wasn't getting bribed by the right person. Exactly. That's exactly right. Yes. Yes. You're right. So before the solidamide scandal, a journalist named Harold Evans, before he becomes editor of the Sunday Times, he launched a campaign for PAPSmears, and he won

and got them to be something that they would do in the UK. So, once they started to realize that it was solidamide that did these things they finally took it off the shelves in 1961 but they didn't like enac powell wouldn't take the existing stuff off the shelf and he wouldn't tell people why he took it off the shelf he just like didn't and you're right he's probably imbrived people not to say anything yeah you know um so if he said something he probably would have subjected them to legal liability because then what you're you had the highest person for that role saying that.

Yeah. Yeah. So Harold Evans was like, okay, and I'm the editor of the Sunday Times, biggest paper in the UK. Like, let's try to help these people and try to find them and get them together. Because a lot of families, like I said, didn't know, you know? Like, you're the only kid in the village who's like that. Who knows? You never met anyone else like you before.

You know what I mean? You know, so in the beginning, 62 families got together to, sue. But while they were in litigation with distillers, the press was not allowed to report on it. It's no longer the law in the UK, but it was then that you couldn't report on an ongoing trial. So they pushed it out as long as possible until they pushed it over three years, making it really hard for other parents to find them because they would have been able to be like, does your child look like this? Did this happen to you? It could be this. Come join us. you know, and then they would have to be like, do you remember taking a pill?

And they'd be like, yes, I'm going to give this to me. Or like, my doctorate to me, here's the bottle or it looked like this or whatever, you know. But they made it really hard for them to find them. So finally, some parents just wanted to settle with the stillers. The tillers was going to give them like a couple thousand pounds and be like, go away. But one father, he was an art dealer named David Mason. He and Harold Evans worked together a lot. And they started a moral campaign.

So they were allowed to do, not necessarily talking about the facts of the case in the paper, but they were allowed to talk about what was happening to the children. So they started to send journalists to live with the families and be like how, you know, a lot of the families had like five kids and one of the five kids can't walk. You know, so like how difficult that life is for them and the assistance that they need to be able to do that. Also, like, this was something interesting that they said in the book that I hadn't thought of is like, pre-industrial revolution and we've talked about this too like in medieval times like everyone was kind of deformed you know like you broke your arm your arm was broken forever you know like you weren't like if you if every time you get injured like it's it compounds it because you can't there's no there's no real doctors like I said it's like someone selling poison in the woods like

try to make you feel better so before the industrial revolution seeing people who had like physical abnormalities was normal because they would be like unfortunately on the streets, you know, or like you see them around. Then they start to do things like create hospitals and places for them to go. I mean, not great places, you know, but places and they hid them from society. So now you have these kids and people haven't seen anyone like this before. So they were like going to the journalist, went to the beach with one of the kids and the whole beach cleared away, you know, or they go to the store and everybody would leave the store. Like it was contagious, you know? Like people were just like treating them really, really poorly as

well on top of like everything else um so they weren't blaming distillers in these in the paper but they were like look at this you know like trying to get around it and distillers was trying to sue them this whole time too but they were just like we're going to talk about it because people need to know about it um distillers was so mad at um david mason the father his daughter lisa um was one of the one of the victims um they took custody of his daughter they got he got him to lose custody of her because they were like, he's not taking the settlement. He's a bad parent. He could be getting this money for her.

And eventually he got her back, but he wouldn't stop. He was like, this is not enough money. Like, we need ongoing support and like, we need care. They ended up getting it to a debate in parliament. And David Mason went to the United States to meet with Ralph Nader. Who should talk about? He is a very interesting character. So interesting.

So he's like young, super cute. He has like black hair. And he's a consumer advocate. And so he worked with David Mason to help work on their case against distillers. They wanted 20 million pounds for all the families, like in total that were part of the lawsuit. So they were like, distillers is never going to do this. Like you can't, you can't, they're never going to give you the money that you want. And one thing that David Mason did and they decided to do is so David Mason is on the plane to

the U.S. to meet with Ralph Nader to figure out what to do. It's on the plane and they have the drink cart. And they're coming around and they're like, oh, would you like some like a whiskey? We have a Johnny Walker and he was like, no. Like this is the company that I'm in the middle of this lawsuit with. So he walked behind the flight attendant, the entire flight

and no one bought gin or booze from distillers on the entire flight. And he said this in an interview that he had with Ralph Nader and he launched a boycott of distillers products. In 1972, their stock lost $35 million in nine days. Good for him.

Because people boycott. And that's what got them to finally give them the money. They gave them 20 million pounds. And they said, well, we're going to get taxed on this money. So we need an extra five. So they give them 25 million pounds. Distillers will eventually be sold. And it is now owned by Diageo, which owns like all the drinks.

Yeah. And they still, Diageo still pays into a trust for the children of thalidomide. They adjust it for inflation and they adjust it for their needs. So they're doing it. How many adults are there right now from this era? There aren't that many. There's maybe like a couple hundred folks left, like 800. Not that many.

It's a rough life, man. That is a rough life. It's a really rough, you know. In 2010, the Minister of State for Health Services in the UK, Mike O'Brien publicly apologized for the role that the health services ministry had in the thalidomide scandal. And a lot of them are really grateful to have that official recognition and that official apology. There have been some thalidomide babies in the past couple years in South America because they have been using it to treat leprosy in some cases. because of that same thing where it inhibits the production of inflammation and when you have

leprosy, it's just like all this is like inflamed things, you know, so they're experimenting at doing that there. And then in some cases, women have accidentally taken it during pregnancy, but before they knew they were pregnant or, I mean, imagine having leprosy and being pregnant. I don't, yeah, like the... I don't even know what that. I'm laughing because I just don't even know what to do with that. The combination is just like... Yeah.

Oil and water a little bit. Oh, my God. Interesting. Yeah. Wild little intersection. We got a Ralph Nader shout out in the middle of this one too. I know. I feel like I want to learn more Ralph Nader things.

I just feel like the whole... We were soured by that little election thing. um but also he made everybody use seatbelts which is a good thing so um yeah he was also right about that the the ford pinto but i think what people because he drafted unsafe or he wrote unsafe at any speed that's when he became like he blew up on the national state was he going off the for pento but it's seriously because like in that situation that's just how cars were made it's not that the fort pinto was like a unique shitbox like they were all shitbox right but he was like let's stop them from reaching shop boxes but like call it out yeah yeah so also uh it was named

after a horse a pinto is a type of horse not a bean no it was not named after a bean it was named after a horse it'll look like a pinto bean sort of you know how they have like the things sort of yeah um anyways that was a interesting story it made me think a lot about you know just how things work here um yes Yeah, it's wild. Yeah. Try to stay alive every day and that's all you can do. It's all you can do. It's all you can do.

Never fly into Mexico City International Airport. Do anything you can. If you have to rewrite yourself to the Arctic Circle to get around going there, please do so. You will never leave. It reminded me a little bit. We were in Tokyo and the Tokyo has the biggest subway station in the world and we were lost in there for like maybe an hour. There's no exit. You're like, what the hell?

We went out of a door. We were in a building that we couldn't get out of. We were like, what? Like, have people been here for days? How do you get out of here? It's crazy. You don't get your gate until 30 minutes before boarding. Also, they will close boarding before when they say they're closing boarding, even if people

aren't there. And then the best part is if you get your gate, sometimes the gate's on the other side of the airport. So it could take you an hour. It could take you 30 minutes. You have no idea. There was a guy sitting behind me in line earlier today this morning. He was like, I've been here since Friday.

I can't get this flight. It was like, he looked. Was he like unshven? Yeah, he was like a shell of a man. Like just his skin was like great. It was really weird. Oh my God. Poor guy.

That sounds terrible. Yeah. No. I, uh, I, I, I, I, I remember what time I went to the airport in Germany. I don't know if it was in Berlin or like the, like a smaller airport or I was not in Berlin, but you checked in at your gate. you just like every door was a gate you checked in there and then you walked right to your gate i was like very efficient of you germans good job that's not yeah that's not a bad way to do it yeah um anyways

thank you for sharing taylor um is there anything else so you want to say before we sign off i did want quickly mention that it is almost october and i don't know if you know or you saw but the calendar for a scary movie night is out our friend doesn't scary movie night so i wanted to challenge you to join it's at least once this year fars because you never join I'm just, yeah, I'm bad at the time zone thing. One was like, the only job of someone in central time is to figure out what time it is in other time zones. So you can't be bad at it. That's 100% true.

He's actually not right. He's not wrong about that. Yeah, that'll be exciting. Yeah, a lot of fun stuff coming up. It's incredible. I can't leave it's already October. I know. Wild.

And we're about to head into an election. What a, what a, it's going to make a crazy couple of months. Yeah. But TVD. Okay, cool. Anything else? That's it. Thank you. Everyone, please find us at Doom DeFillPod on all the socials. If you have any suggestions, email us, Doomdefilpod at gmail.com and tell your friends. Leave us reviews. Please.

Awesome. I'm going to go ahead and cut it off.