When Teresa Smith was born nearly 66 years ago at just 28 weeks, with no legs and short arms, it was feared she would only live for a couple of minutes. Having been delivered at her parents' home in ...

Fifty years ago, the sedative Thalidomide was withdrawn after thousands of mothers gave birth to disabled babies. That ageing Thalidomide generation now faces rising care bills - but some hope a ...

NPR's Ayesha Rascoe interviews author Jennifer Vanderbes on her new book, Wonder Drug, about the sleeping pill Thalidomide, which caused birth defects when taken by pregnant women. In the 1950s and ...

It was a grim harvest for West Germany: 3,000 babies dead shortly after birth and another 3,000 with grotesque malformations, because their mothers had taken the sleeping-pill tranquilizer thalidomide ...

The drug was never licensed for sale in the U.S., so American victims of thalidomide number fewer than 20. Great Britain, however, has more than 1,000 thalidomide babies. In West Germany, where Chemie ...

Australia’s prime minister has given a national apology to survivors of the thalidomide scandal and their families. It comes over 60 years after the morning sickness drug started causing birth defects ...

It was touted as a sedative with no hangover. It was hailed as non-addictive. It was rumored to present no side effects. It was trumpeted in medical journal ads as “astonishingly safe” and “completely ...

The FDA reviewed an application for the drug in the early 1960s but withheld approval. The case led to a tightening of regulations for drug reviews. These capsules of the drug thalidomide, seen at the ...

“The question is going to be, ‘Why now?’” said Steve Berman of Hagens Berman. “The answer is that medical science has advanced. We now understand the mechanism by which Thalidomide works. There’s been ...

Thalidomide was prescribed around the world as a drug to treat nausea during pregnancy. It was directly linked to thousands of children being born with severe physical disabilities. The FDA reviewed ...