Everybody Knows, Part 17: Was the Thalidomide Tragedy Intentional?

(L) Dr Wm McBride, Photo: Telegraph.co.uk (C) skeleton of a rabbit, Photo: disabledrabbits.com (R) Dr Doulas Keeping of Queensland

by Mary W Maxwell, LLB

This article is not strictly related to this series’ subject, the upcoming trial of Dr Russell Pridgeon. My excuse for publishing it, is that a GumshoeNews Commenter complained that we had censored our own work on thalidomide. True, I did delete my 31 May 2021 article but am now re-running it. As you will see, it sheds odd light on the NSW Medical Council. For me as a law-trained person, one of the biggest discoveries about Pridgeon’s case was the shadowy role that a Medical Council can play in cancelling a license.

I agree with Russell that such councils make it possible for the government to remove any doctor’s registration — good behavior no bar! And recall my interview of William Sumner Scott, as to the power of ABA to punish a good lawyer.

Rabbits and Us

Here is my theory that the thalidomide tragedy was planned, as I discussed in my 2013 book Consider the Lilies. Thousands of babies were born without limbs. If my memory serves me, I first got the notion when I read that experiments in the 1930s in Germany showed that one could prevent a rabbit’s limbs from developing. This was done deliberately by tampering chemically with the embryo. Thalidomide itself was not manufactured until 1957.

Many animals, including humans, are tetrapods, that is, they have four limbs, and they are pentadactyls, that is, their limbs have five digits. It is known that limb buds form very early in the embryo.  For humans, the limb buds for the child’s arms appear early in the pregnancy; leg limb buds appear shortly after.  It’s known how the limb bud develops into a perfect limb. To name just two of the relevant substances, there is Fgf, fibroblast growth factor, and AER, apical ectodermal ridges. If, in the laboratory, you remove an animal’s AER, the skeletal development of its limb will go astray.

(Since the 1990s, when gene mapping was available, one could switch off the growth of a limb by preventing the relevant genes from performing their task, but this post-dates thalidomide.)

Note: Anyone who, in the 1950s, planned this event must have been born earlier than 1920 and so he/she is dead now.

Dr William McBride of Australia (1927-2018)

In June 1961, two Sydney women gave birth to babies missing the upper arm bone. They were patients of obstetrician William McBride. When he delivered a third baby that looked just like those other two, he realized it must have been the morning-sickness pill he had prescribed: thalidomide.  By 13 June 1961, he told the Australian distributor of the drug, Distillers Biochemical, about his suspicions. They took no action.

On the same day McBride mailed a short article to The Lancet. To his amazement, a full MONTH later he got a rejection — as there was a large number of important (!) papers awaiting publication, said deputy editor, Dr I Douglas-Wilson. (In his book, Killing the Messenger, McBride says he could hardly bring himself to show the letter of rejection to his wife Patricia, herself a doctor.)

By September 4, McBride had delivered a fourth baby that was missing its radius. Two weeks later he told Wellcome pharmacologist Roland Thorp his theory: that deformities were produced by thalidomide. Thorp disagreed — and continued to disagree after a fifth baby was born on 26 September.

On September 20, 1961, The Lancet, perhaps tipped off by Thorp, wrote an editorial saying that drugs taken by pregnant women may enter and upset the fetus. “It behooves all who care to be on the alert for it.” [Do I detect sarcastic language?] However, the specific drug “thalidomide” was not mentioned!

If you read McBride’s book, Killing the Messenger, and Harold Evans’ book, The Paper Chase, you may agree that the behavior of the manufacturer is a give-away. Pharma does not normally ignore complaints, for fear of lawsuits. But here, silence was resolutely maintained. I say this was done in order to make time for more mothers to take thalidomide. (Look how the CDC pushes for children to take a Covid vaccine today — after its dangers have been demonstrated.)

The Manufacturer

Chemie-Grunenthal is a post-war pharmaceutical company in Aachen, Germany. It is not one of the giants. It has been continually owned by the family of Hermann Wirtz. They marketed a drug called Contergan, which we call thalidomide. It was a sleeping pill, or tranquilizer for adults, and an antidote to morning sickness for pregnant women.

The drug, when first sold in 1957, caused neurological damage in adults and in embryos it caused a range of malformities, particularly birth of children without full arms and legs. The main country affected was Germany, in 1960 and 1961, with thousands of such children. Many were stillborn, or died, or were allowed to die (I think they means they were not fed).

The UK had the second largest group.  Australia and New Zealand together had about 100 affected children.  The US did not have casualties, as the drug had not obtained FDA-approval there.  Worldwide, the drug was withdrawn from the market on November 28, 1961.

The Criminal Trial

A criminal case was brought against Grunenthal in 1968, but no one was either convicted or acquitted. It must have been for negligence as no one has ever said the manufacturer did harm deliberately.

Per the New York Times, on December 18, 1970: (bolding added):

“ALSDORF. West Germany’s thalidomide trial was discontinued today after two and a half years under a compromise settlement providing some compensation for those who are believed to have been victims of the sedative.

“No formal verdict was pronounced against the defendants, five employees Of Chemie Grunenthal. But the Aachen District Court declared that it held thalidomide responsible for the birth defects of thousands of West German infants and for the nervous disorders that about 800 adults suffered after having used the drug.

“Under the settlement, which the company proposed in April, the 2,000 surviving children … will receive a total of about $27 million, plus interest. This means about $19,000 for each child.”

In December 2013, at the Victorian Supreme Court, a class action by the Australian and NZ survivors resulted in a payout of $81million AUD for 100 claimants, $810,000 per person.

A Hero and a Target

Now back to the Australian connection. In 2011, I published a congratulatory letter, on the 50^th anniversary of McBride’s discovery of the cause of the children’s deformities. McBride’s daughter told me that he wept when she read it to him over the phone. Why so?  He had been hailed as a hero at first, and was made a Companion of the British Empire. The government of France gave him a huge award with which to set up an Institute in Sydney.

But subsequently he became a medical pariah. McBride acted as an expert witness against another company, regarding the drug Debendox. That did him in — he had to be attacked. I quote from my Consider the Lilies:

“The subsequent persecution of Bill McBride should clinch it for anyone. This doctor was subjected to exactly the same (probably scripted by the exact same person) routine as was Andy Wakefield in regard to autism…. A combination of the New South Wales medical licencing board and Australian Broadcasting Corp did it. (For Wakefield, it was media, especially Brian Deer, plus the General Medical Council.)

“An irrelevant matter was brought up against McBride – that he had performed 44 unnecessary Caesarians. A court case ensued for years, during which no patient had anything bad to say about him. Norman Swan of ABC accused McBride of fraud in research, having to do with rabbit’s drinking water. The only doctor who could vouch for McBride in this rabbit-water matter, Dr Jan Langhham in America, had just died, young.”

Portfolio Shuffling in Germany

Now flash back to the trial of Grunenthal in Aachen, Germany in 1968, over the “Contergan scandal.” Recall that the trial had “closed down” in 1970. There’s no way certain persons were going to allow certain persons to be punished, right?  But the problem couldn’t just fade out, as the subject matter was painfully visible. Plenty of young Germans — then around age 7 — had to be in wheelchairs for lack of legs or had to acquire some amazing skills to make up for arm-lessness.

A 2014 article in The Guardian, by the late Harold Evans, points out that the court made the decision to close the case (!) and that the prosecution agreed. Evans wrote:

“The nine men charged with intent to commit bodily harm and involuntary manslaughter went free. The judges said this was with the explicit approval of the prosecution. They granted Grünenthal immunity from any further criminal proceedings.

“On July 21, 1969, the documents show, Grünenthal directors and their lawyers met in secret with the federal health ministry…On 18 September, four federal ministries were involved in discussing an ‘overall solution,’ meaning a high-level political intervention to stop the trial.”

Natch. But who is this agreeable prosecutor?  It is Dr Joseph Neuberger (1902-1977). the very man who, until shortly before, had represented the defendant, Hermann Wirtz, the founder of Chemie-Grunenthal (which has been a family firm throughout).

How could he become prosecutor?  I think there was a change of Cabinet was for the purpose of shutting down the court case.  Evans, at The Guardian, reports:

“There was a political coup that led to an SPD/FDP coalition. Neuberger (SPD) got the job of minister of justice for North Rhine-Westphalia, a post he held from 1966-1972. Three days before he took office, he wrote to the prosecutors to demand they stop proceedings against his client: ‘I would be personally obliged for a rapid execution’.”

My Speculation about the FDA Connection

Around 1962, the FDA (US Food and Drug Administration) was given huge kudos for having refused to approve of the drug Kevodan (the US name for the thalidomide pills). President John Kennedy gave a top award to Frances Kelsey, the officer in charge of the FDA. The narrative of the day was that Kelsey did not think enough research had been done. “Her caution saved us.”

That strikes me as odd. The drug had been selling well in Europe for 3 years, and the US had no awareness that children were getting deformed by it.  It was known that the limb buds could be thwarted. Why didn’t someone in the FDA discover that?

McBride’s work is what persuades me of conspiracy.  Just imagine The Lancet not accepting a warning from an obstetrician who saw it happening in his own practice. Very suspicious. The way he was treated later, too, is weird. Note his obituary at abc.net.au is headlined:

“Dr William McBride: The flawed character credited with linking thalidomide to birth defects”. That needs to be corrected.  The flawed characters were the ones who made a four-year sport of harassing him in the dock. Like Pridgeon, a good doctor.

I carry my wild speculation to the point of imagining that the main purpose of the thalidomide tragedy was to create an aura of great respectability around the FDA. It certainly did have that effect.   Perhaps the scandal of Covid today will put paid to FDA’s authority. The FDA jumped to grant “EUAs” – emergency use authorization — for Covid vaccinations, when there is no emergency at all. The entire technology of the Moderna vaccine is new – so how can anyone give it approval with no animal testing?

In any case, I do not think the FDA legislation gives it anything beyond the task of determining the purity of foods and drug items offered for sale. There is no constitutional role for it to play in directing a doctor’s work. Correct me if I’m wrong.

One Happy Aside — Dr Keeping

There is a happy story. Given that Dr McBride had been feted like mad in the days of glory – 1961 to 1965 – you’d think colleagues would have proudly stood up for him when the prosecutor was persecuting him. As far as I know, only one did so. Dr Douglas Keeping, an obstetrician from Queensland, an Aberdonian by birth, said that McBride’s obstetric procedures were “well within the tram lines.” Dr Keeping also said, in the witness box, that the case was “without substance” and was “a persecution.”

The happy story is that I just googled for Douglas Keeping, MD and found that in 2019 he had a retirement party at the Mater Hospital. You must read the testimonials. Wow. Here is one:

“You know when the midwives fight over who gets to work with Doug that he’s a wonderful craftsman. He delivered me 35 years ago in a difficult vbac for my Mum. Then he delivered my two 9 pound 5, and 10 pound 1, vaginally. He also delivered my younger sister and my nephew and niece. If having babies was easier and cheaper I would have kept doing it just to see him! He deserves all the accolade and awards possible.”

Thanks for helping Bill McBride, Doug.  We at Gumshoe in Melbourne salute you! Is there a doc out there who wants to throw a fit over the arrest of Russell Pridgeon?  Please email me at MaxwellMaryLLB@gmail.com.