Ashley Coats

BTEC-1000

May 6th, 2021

Biotechnology Position

We must consider ethically how to go about helping people. It seams as if we

have the money and connections we just will openly trust advice and pay for

medication or procedures. We jump for the quick fix and I wonder if having

connections to advanced types of help are really helping us evolve. Looking back

about 60 years you can see the demand for a quick fix and how the distribution of a

drug killed and harmed thousands of infants and fetuses. A truly tragic historical event

in biotechnology was the wide spread distribution of the drug Thalidomide. It was

distributed in over 40 countries to pregnant woman in the late 1950’s.1

Without proper testing or clinical trials, a seemly safe drug, killed and hurt

thousands of babies. These woman who were trying to endure the pains of pregnancy,

gave birth to children missing libs. These children had an endless list of complications

and deformities, missing ears, brain damage, bowel problems and the list goes on. This

medicine was taken in the efforts to help calm down nausea and morning sickness.

1 Management of Thalidomide Toxicity

 Woman were not aware of how badly this could effect them, hoping of course

just to elevate pregnancy symptoms. It had been noted previously that it was suppose

to be so safe a rat couldn’t overdoes. It was used as a sedative and its sales were

almost as high as aspirin2 Many woman who consumed it did so in their first trimester

and noticeable skin rashes, constipation and weakness. They were having neurological

problems and were having a hard time finding out why and had to start looking at the

toxicities of Thalidomide.

Thalidomide Deformities were greatly being noticed in 1960 and many scientist

were trying to find the reason. No longer was this drug being sold by 1961 In west

Germany. This was after Widukind Lenz and William Mcbride discovered the

connecting links.3 They noticed a similarity between the children being born with these

defects and the mothers who were prescribed Thalidomide while pregnant.

This had a global effect as over more than 10,000 babies and now we must take

this as a learning lesson to never let this happen again. By carrying out more clinical

trials and testing in on a much smaller scale.

Biotechnology can clearly help us in finding solutions to problems but now the

FDA requires much more intensive trials that can last up to 12 years. This drug has

many adverse reactions such as blood clotting leading to death of a fetus. It still has its

benefits today though and it is still approved by the FDA under 2 uses. One of them to

2 The Thalidomide Tragedy

3 SciShow
help with treatments in those who have Leprosy and used in education programs for

pharmaceutical studying.

References

Footnote 2 Carolyn J Stephens on Aug 21, et al. “Helix Magazine.” The Thalidomide

Tragedy: Lessons for Drug Safety and Regulation | Helix Magazine,

helix.northwestern.edu/article/thalidomide-tragedy-lessons-drug-safety-and-

regulation.

Footnote 1 Ghobrial, Irene M, and S Vincent Rajkumar. “Management of Thalidomide

Toxicity.” The Journal of Supportive Oncology, U.S. National Library of Medicine, 2003,

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3134146/.

Footnote 3 scishow. “Thalidomide: The Chemistry Mistake That Killed Thousands of

Babies.” YouTube, YouTube, 24 Sept. 2017, www.youtube.com/watch?

v=mrTHfBCduRA.