The Devil in the Details - Chapter Three

The Devil in the Details - Chapter Three

Released Thursday, 26th September 2024
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The Devil in the Details - Chapter Three

The Devil in the Details - Chapter Three

The Devil in the Details - Chapter Three

The Devil in the Details - Chapter Three

Thursday, 26th September 2024
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0:00

This episode is brought to you by Progressive.

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2021 and May 2022. Potential

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savings will vary. The fall of

0:40

1961 was a happening time. Time

0:44

for this nation to take a

0:46

clearly leading role in

0:48

space achievement. There was a

0:50

glamorous young couple in the White House with

0:53

a President hell bent on going to the

0:55

moon. The civil rights movement

0:57

was gaining momentum. The

0:59

ride had become a symbol of

1:01

the fight against segregation, not only

1:03

in southern bus terminals, but

1:05

everywhere. The swinging 60s

1:08

were just revving up. Bob

1:10

Dylan gave his first concert at Carnegie

1:12

Hall and Brian Epstein heard

1:14

the Beatles for the first time

1:16

in Liverpool, England. In

1:18

Germany and elsewhere around the world, a

1:21

sedative called Phyllidimide had been selling

1:24

like mad for several years. Kemi

1:27

Grunenthal, the manufacturer of that

1:29

sedative, was profiting wildly. But

1:33

there was a pocket of people in

1:35

a world of heart. I'm

1:39

Katie Haffner, and this is

1:41

the third chapter of The Devil in

1:43

the Details, a special series from Lost

1:45

Women of Science. In

1:47

this episode, we explore the

1:49

proverbial shit hitting the proverbial

1:51

fan. In

1:58

the fall of 1961, In 1961

2:01

in the United States, Dr.

2:03

Francis Kelsey continued to stall

2:05

the application for thalidomide, much

2:07

to the frustration of the

2:09

manufacturer William S. Merrill. At

2:12

the same time, in Europe, women

2:14

by the thousands had given birth

2:16

to children severely injured while in

2:19

the womb, and several doctors had

2:21

taken notice. Most notably,

2:23

Wiederkent Lenz, the skeptical pediatrician,

2:26

had been investigating for several

2:28

months. He and

2:30

Carl Schultehillen, the father of one of

2:32

these babies, were talking to as many

2:35

affected families as they could find. But

2:38

there was no obvious culprit. Then,

2:41

on November 11th, the story began

2:43

to shift. That

2:46

day, Wiederkent had gone to meet a family,

2:48

this time on his own. They

2:50

were the parents of a girl born without

2:52

arms. The mother

2:55

mentioned she had taken

2:57

Conturgan, Grunenthal's thalidomide-based sedative.

3:00

The following day, Wiederkent visited

3:02

another family. As usual,

3:04

he introduced himself and explained that he

3:06

was trying to figure out what was

3:09

causing these strange births. And

3:11

for the second time, in as

3:13

many days, Conturgan came up. The

3:16

father told Wiederkent plainly he

3:18

thought Conturgan was the cause.

3:21

Okay, Conturgan had come up before, but

3:23

it had never been at the top

3:25

of Wiederkent's list. Maybe

3:27

because many of the families he'd interviewed

3:29

did not mention Conturgan, or maybe he,

3:31

too, had been

3:34

influenced by the company's bold safety

3:36

claims. But two days in

3:38

a row? This time,

3:40

Wiederkent paid attention. He

3:42

asked the father what made him

3:44

suspect Conturgan. The

3:47

father said he'd read that these

3:49

tablets could cause nerve damage. By

3:51

then, the news about the peripheral

3:53

neuritis had traveled. After

3:55

the meeting, Wiederkent called up Carl, and

3:58

he asked him this. treatments.

6:01

It was part of a nationwide

6:03

effort to treat soldiers fighting in

6:05

malaria zones. It put her in

6:07

a unique, an absolutely unique position

6:10

in my opinion. Trent Stephens is

6:12

the co-author of Dark Remedy, a

6:14

book about the history of thalidomide.

6:16

He's also a developmental biologist who's

6:19

studied thalidomide's effects on embryos. And

6:22

he says that during her time

6:24

in Geiling's lab, Frances got to

6:26

work with quinine, a

6:28

well-known anti-malarial medication. She

6:31

and Ellis Kelsey were testing how

6:33

rabbits broke it down in their

6:35

livers, and that included pregnant rabbits.

6:37

One of the things they learned during

6:39

their research on quinine is that it

6:42

passes the so-called placental barrier. In

6:47

quinine's case, Frances was fascinated

6:49

to discover that rabbits in

6:51

utero processed quinine very differently

6:53

than adult rabbits did. Adult

6:55

rabbit livers are very good

6:57

at breaking down quinine, which is

7:00

important because if your body

7:02

doesn't break down a drug, it

7:04

can accumulate in your system beyond

7:06

what's safe. And

7:08

it turned out that fetal rabbits

7:11

cannot break down quinine at all.

7:15

So Frances Kelsey knew that just

7:17

because a drug didn't seem to

7:19

hurt an adult, that did not

7:21

mean it wouldn't hurt a developing

7:23

embryo. In fact,

7:25

during her own pregnancies, she

7:27

was very careful about taking

7:29

any drugs. And actually,

7:32

around the time Frances joined the

7:34

FDA, there was a growing understanding

7:36

of this. Children,

7:38

babies, and fetuses aren't just

7:41

adults in miniature. Their bodies

7:43

work differently. So you

7:45

can't assume that because a drug is safe

7:47

for an adult, it will be safe at

7:50

other stages of development. Meryl

8:00

about safety during pregnancy, and

8:02

it wasn't the first time.

8:05

She'd asked about it a few months

8:07

earlier too and she didn't get a

8:09

satisfactory answer. Now Meryl did

8:12

have some evidence about the use of

8:14

thalidomide in pregnancy. The company

8:16

told Francis they weren't aware of any

8:18

problems, but the company had only tried

8:20

it out in late pregnancy. Francis

8:23

didn't think that was good enough.

8:25

The FDA needed to know what

8:27

happened if thalidomide was taken throughout

8:30

pregnancy, and she was right to

8:32

insist on that. As we know

8:34

now, thalidomide is most damaging when taken

8:36

in the first few weeks, but

8:39

Meryl refused to conduct such a study.

8:42

Of course, conducting another study would mean

8:44

yet another delay in getting this drug

8:46

to market, but Meryl did

8:48

agree to add a warning to

8:51

its labels indicating that thalidomide's effects

8:53

on pregnancy were not known. Still,

8:57

Francis Kelsey was not ready

8:59

to approve the drug. And

9:02

that should have been enough to keep Americans safe,

9:04

right? The drug wasn't for sale

9:06

in the US. But here's

9:09

the problem. While Meryl and the

9:11

FDA went back and forth about

9:13

labeling and studies and paperwork, hundreds

9:15

of pregnant women were already taking

9:17

thalidomide in the United States. Some

9:20

had brought it back from overseas, but

9:23

many of them got thalidomide from their

9:25

doctors. Because Meryl had

9:27

distributed Kevadon, its thalidomide pill,

9:30

across the United States without

9:32

any FDA approval or oversight.

9:35

And back then, that

9:37

was completely legal. Hi,

9:47

I'm Katie Hafner, co-executive producer of

9:49

Lost Women of Science. We

9:51

need your help. Tracking down

9:54

all the information that makes

9:56

our stories so rich and

9:58

engaging and original. is

10:00

no easy thing. Imagine

10:02

being confronted with boxes full of hundreds

10:04

of letters in handwriting that's hard to

10:06

read or trying to piece together someone's

10:09

life with just her name to go

10:11

on. Your donations

10:13

make this work possible. Help

10:16

us bring you more stories of remarkable

10:18

women. There's a prominent donate

10:20

button on our website. All you have to

10:23

do is click. Please

10:26

visit lostwomenofscience.org. That's

10:29

lostwomenofscience.org. The

10:34

dogs are going to, this is going to take a moment.

10:36

Sorry. I think

10:38

it's inevitable that the pets are going to

10:40

feature in this. Gwen Rickman

10:43

lives in Cincinnati with a

10:45

menagerie of pets. I have

10:47

two shelters and two

10:49

cats. Ella, our senior producer,

10:51

called Gwen up on Zoom a few

10:53

months ago. Gwen closed the door

10:55

to keep the pets out, but some

10:57

were insisting on joining anyway. That

11:00

sounds like Arwen, the small female who's

11:02

making all the noise at the moment.

11:05

She has to say something about

11:07

everything. Gwen is in her early

11:09

60s now, and she's a thalidomide

11:11

survivor. She was born in Cincinnati

11:13

in May 1962. And

11:16

pay attention to that date, May 1962,

11:20

at least a year after

11:22

Francis Kelsey first asked Mero

11:25

for evidence that thalidomide was

11:27

safe to take during pregnancy.

11:29

I was born with phocomelia of

11:32

both arms, which means my arms

11:34

are short and misshapen. One

11:36

arm is eight inches, the other arm is 12

11:39

inches in length. And both

11:41

feet are clubbed, meaning

11:43

they literally look like golf clubs. Until

11:45

she was about five, Gwen could walk

11:47

and play t-ball with her brothers in

11:50

the backyard by moving around on her

11:52

knees. But later, surgery that

11:54

was meant to help her actually made

11:56

it harder for her to walk, and

11:58

she started using her hands. wheelchair. Gwen

12:01

says that when she was growing up, her

12:04

parents encouraged her to be as independent as

12:06

possible and in general took a tough love

12:08

approach to raising a child with a disability.

12:11

For instance, if I tried to get

12:14

them to do something like

12:16

go get something for me that my parents

12:18

knew I could do, my parents

12:21

would say, are you handicapped or something? Go

12:23

do it yourself. Gwen says she didn't ask

12:25

her parents a lot of questions about her

12:27

disability because it was clear they didn't want

12:29

to talk about it. So for

12:31

years, she assumed her folk

12:34

omelea was genetic. There are in

12:36

fact very rare genetic conditions that

12:38

cause folk omelea, the shortening of

12:40

the limbs, but Gwen's

12:42

condition wasn't genetic. I

12:45

didn't actually hear the word thalidomide until

12:47

I was like seventh, eighth grade. Gwen

12:49

went to a public school for kids

12:51

with physical disabilities and like at most

12:54

schools around middle school, the teachers split

12:56

up the boys and the girls to

12:58

talk about sex education. And

13:01

they said if anybody

13:03

wants to find out if you could pass

13:05

your disability on to a baby, we'll be

13:07

happy to talk to you. And

13:10

so when I came home that night, mom

13:12

said, so how did

13:14

it go? So Gwen told her mom

13:16

about the baby conversation and she

13:19

said she didn't have a lot of questions

13:21

for the nurse because she already knew her

13:23

condition was genetic. And my mom said, well

13:25

that's not actually the case. And

13:28

I said, well, what is it then?

13:30

And that's when she said it's

13:33

from a drug called thalidomide that I was

13:35

given when I was pregnant with you. And

13:38

that was it. Conversation over.

13:41

Gwen eventually learned that her mom

13:43

had been given thalidomide sometime around

13:45

October 1961 during

13:48

her first weeks of pregnancy. In

13:51

October 1961, Kevadon was of course not

13:54

for sale in the United States. Frances

13:56

Kelsey had not approved the drug. But just

13:59

because because the drug wasn't

14:01

approved didn't mean the company

14:03

couldn't distribute it in its

14:05

so-called clinical trials. Now,

14:09

when I use the phrase

14:12

clinical trials, you might be

14:14

imagining a rigorous placebo-controlled study

14:16

with patients systematically recruited and

14:18

symptoms carefully tracked on clipboards.

14:22

Well, that's not how things worked back then.

14:24

Drug companies didn't actually need approval from

14:26

the FDA to conduct a clinical trial.

14:29

All they had to do was turn

14:31

in whatever results they had come up

14:33

with when they submitted the drug to

14:35

the FDA for approval. Okay,

14:38

we don't know for sure, but theoretically, for instance,

14:40

they could ask, you know, 100, 1,000, 10 people,

14:45

gee, how do you feel on this drug?

14:47

And somebody could say, oh, yeah, pretty darn

14:49

good. But what Merrill

14:51

had done to come up with its

14:53

results, well, it almost

14:55

defies belief. In

14:58

1958, after

15:00

Merrill first got the license from

15:02

Grunenthal to sell the littimide, the

15:04

company got busy recruiting doctors to

15:06

test the drug. Merrill

15:08

was based out of Cincinnati, and

15:11

one of those doctors was a

15:13

Cincinnati obstetrician named Ray Nelson. He

15:16

just happened to be a friend

15:18

of Merrill's director of clinical research,

15:21

Raymond Pogg. And

15:23

I think the Nelson-Pogg story

15:25

tells you everything you need

15:27

to know about these so-called

15:29

clinical trials. Nelson

15:32

treated a few hundred pregnant women

15:34

each year, and Pogg asked

15:36

Nelson to try out the littimide with

15:38

these patients to help calm their nerves

15:40

at night. In June

15:43

1961, Nelson published a

15:45

paper in the American

15:47

Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology

15:50

titled, Trial of the

15:52

Littimide in Insomnia Associated with the

15:54

Third Trimester. The

15:57

paper had a very upbeat conclusion. Inamide

16:00

was a safe and effective sleeping

16:02

agent for use in late pregnancy.

16:06

But here's what would eventually come out.

16:09

Ray Nelson didn't actually write

16:12

that paper. Later

16:14

on, in a legal deposition, he

16:16

admitted that Raymond Pogg, his buddy

16:19

at Merrill, had written the whole

16:21

thing. The lawyer doing

16:23

the deposition asked him, how about

16:25

all the papers cited in that article?

16:27

Did you read those? Nope.

16:30

OK, so what about all the data? Do you

16:32

have copies of the reports you sent to Merrill?

16:35

Nelson said no. It

16:37

was all verbal. And he explained

16:39

it was, quote, by telephone, or it

16:41

may have been that we had lunch

16:44

together, or it might have been when

16:46

we played golf. Dr.

16:48

Ray Nelson was the doctor

16:50

who treated when Rickman's mom.

16:54

She did say that she had only

16:56

taken one dose of the thalidomide that

16:58

she was given. But that

17:00

one pill was enough. There

17:02

are studies going back to 1990s, early

17:05

1990s, that suggest just one tablet is enough

17:07

to cause damage to the embryo. Neil

17:10

Vargasen is a professor of developmental

17:12

biology at the University of Aberdeen

17:15

in Scotland. He's

17:17

done extensive research on thalidomide's

17:19

effects. We now know

17:21

that one of the main ways

17:23

that thalidomide harms embryos is by

17:26

blocking angiogenesis, the development of

17:28

blood vessels. It's the action of the

17:30

drug on the blood vessels that's causing

17:32

the damage. And as you destroy the

17:34

blood vessels, you then get cells dying

17:36

off. And it does it in a time-dependent way.

17:39

So if an embryo is exposed to

17:41

thalidomide when the arms are forming, the

17:43

blood vessels feeding those tissues will die

17:45

and the arms won't grow. And

17:48

with the ears, the heart, the brain. That's

18:01

why many survivors have

18:03

got multiple damage. And no

18:05

two survivors look the same. They

18:07

all look unique because it was

18:10

depending on when their mom took

18:12

the medicine. There's a critical two-week

18:14

window for the kind of harm

18:17

typically associated with thalidomide, and

18:19

that window starts roughly three

18:21

weeks after fertilization. When

18:24

thalidomide is taken in that window

18:26

of time, you can find effects

18:28

on arms, heart, legs, all the

18:31

symptoms we've mentioned before. But

18:33

harm isn't restricted to that two-week

18:36

window. If you took the

18:38

drug before the so-called time-sensitive

18:40

window, you'd end up in a

18:43

miscarriage because you can imagine all the blood vessels would

18:45

be destroyed. There will be no blood vessels, so there's

18:47

no embryo. And if you took it after the so-called

18:49

time-sensitive window, you might not see

18:51

damage to limbs, but you

18:53

would see internal organ damage and possibly brain

18:55

damage as well. In

18:58

October 1961, when Gwen

19:00

Rickman's mother took that pill early in

19:03

her pregnancy, she wouldn't have known any

19:05

of this. Her doctor

19:07

wouldn't have known either. At the

19:09

time, there were at most suspicions

19:11

about thalidomide. But

19:14

it was only a few weeks

19:16

later across the Atlantic that Wiederkind

19:18

Lenz had two fateful interviews with

19:20

two families in Germany, both naming

19:22

the same suspect, Kontorgann.

19:26

So after years of women taking

19:28

this damn drug, finally Wiederkind Lenz

19:30

was about to set things in

19:32

motion. Here's

19:35

how it all unfolded. In November

19:37

of 1961, after months of investigating these

19:41

mysterious births, aggrieved father

19:43

Carl Schulte-Hillen and dogged

19:46

pediatrician Wiederkind Lenz had

19:48

gumshoed their way to a prime suspect,

19:51

Kontorgann. Here's author Jennifer

19:53

Vanderbess again. The tough part of the

19:55

story is that once Carl realizes it's

19:57

this drug, he has to go back. and

20:00

ask his wife if she took

20:02

it. At first, Linda

20:04

Schulte-Hillen couldn't remember even taking

20:06

Contregan, the German version of

20:08

the Linomide. But then

20:11

a memory surfaced. A

20:13

year earlier, when Linda was only one

20:15

month pregnant, her father had died. The

20:18

family had traveled to attend his funeral.

20:21

It was a stressful time. Nerves

20:23

were frayed. And at the

20:25

end of the day, the whole family

20:27

took a sedative, including Linda, who was

20:30

pregnant. She took one or

20:32

two, and that, in the

20:34

first trimester of pregnancy early on, immediately

20:37

affected Jan in his development.

20:40

On November 15, 1961, Veytakin called Grunenthal. He

20:46

reached a man named Heinrich Mookter.

20:48

We could dedicate an entire episode

20:51

to just this guy. But

20:53

the important thing to know right

20:55

now is that he wasn't just

20:57

any Grunenthal employee. He was the

21:00

company's chief science officer, and he

21:02

had played a key early role in

21:04

the Linomide. And

21:06

he got a cut of every

21:09

package of the Linomide sold. Veytakin

21:12

told Mookter that Grunenthal needed to

21:14

take the drug off the market

21:16

immediately, and the next

21:18

day he put that request in

21:21

writing. And he did

21:23

not mince words. He wrote in his

21:25

letter that simply waiting for proof that

21:28

the drug was harmless was

21:30

indefensible. This drug should not

21:32

be sold until it was

21:34

conclusively shown to be safe.

21:37

And then that weekend, Veytakin

21:39

attended a pediatrician's conference. And

21:42

during a session about the uptick in

21:44

Phocomelia cases being seen around the country,

21:47

he stood up. Veytakin

21:49

said that he had identified a substance

21:51

that might be to blame. He

21:54

couldn't yet prove that it was the cause

21:56

of these injuries, but it was conceivable, and

21:59

so as a citizen, he

22:02

could no longer remain silent. He

22:04

didn't want to name the drug,

22:06

but he says there is a

22:09

drug. We are pretty sure it's

22:11

causing this epidemic of thocobelia. And

22:13

he made an urgent plea right

22:15

there in public that the unnamed

22:17

substance be withdrawn from the market

22:19

immediately. He warned that each month's

22:21

delay meant dozens more babies would

22:23

be harmed. Early

22:26

the following week, Grunenthal sent three

22:29

representatives to meet with Vittacont lens

22:31

in person. He was

22:33

ready to present his case, but he

22:35

wanted witnesses present for this conversation. And

22:38

so in the afternoon of November 20th,

22:40

they met, along

22:42

with three representatives from the Hamburg

22:44

University Clinics and four from the

22:47

Hamburg Health Authorities. It

22:50

was, by all accounts, a tense

22:52

meeting. Grunenthal wanted Vittacont

22:54

to hand over all his materials.

22:57

But some of that was confidential

22:59

patient information, and some was

23:01

property of the Hamburg Clinic, and it wasn't

23:04

his to hand over. The

23:06

Grunenthal side said that if he did not

23:08

turn the material over to them, then

23:10

any delay in action would be his fault.

23:13

He said he'd consult with a lawyer and

23:15

the group would reconvene the next morning. The

23:19

following morning, he gave them copies of

23:21

his redacted notes. Now

23:23

Grunenthal tightened the screws.

23:26

The representatives said there would be

23:29

legal ramifications if Vittacont made false

23:31

accusations against the company, and

23:33

Vittacont asked them flat out, would

23:36

they guarantee that they would not

23:38

use the material he presented in

23:40

a lawsuit against him? No,

23:43

they said, they couldn't guarantee it. So

23:46

they scheduled another meeting for later

23:48

in the week, Friday, November 24,

23:50

this time in Dusseldorf, with

23:52

representatives of the Regional Health

23:55

Ministry. Vittacont later described being

23:57

repeatedly interrupted by the Grunenthal

23:59

team. representatives as he tried

24:01

to present his evidence, but this

24:03

time he took an even firmer

24:05

stand. No, he

24:07

said he couldn't say the case

24:09

was definitively proven, but the evidence

24:12

was overwhelming and there could be

24:14

no reasonable doubt. I

24:16

want to take a minute, or maybe a

24:18

minute and a half, to talk about this

24:20

man, Vito Kunt Lenz. Here you

24:22

have the son of a Nazi, and

24:25

not just some run-of-the-mill Nazi, Fritz

24:27

Lenz. Let me remind you,

24:29

was a prominent eugenics specialist

24:32

who endorsed racial cleansing even

24:34

before Hitler. And

24:37

he believed that disabled people

24:39

should be sterilized, i.e. forcibly

24:42

prevented from reproducing. Fritz

24:45

Lenz was still very much alive

24:47

and espousing these eugenic theories

24:49

when his son took on

24:51

Kemi Grunenthal in the

24:53

name of every single infant

24:56

severely disabled at the hands

24:58

of bad medicine. Like

25:00

his father, Vito Kunt later became a

25:03

geneticist. But not only did

25:05

this apple fall far from the tree,

25:07

it rolled as far away as possible.

25:10

I can only imagine the courage it

25:12

must have taken for the younger Dr.

25:14

Lenz to do what he did in

25:16

1961, still not even a generation removed

25:21

from the Third Reich. Like

25:23

Francis Kelsey, Vito Kunt Lenz was

25:26

no grandstander. The two people hadn't

25:28

met each other, of course, and from what we

25:30

can tell from the scant bit of audio we've

25:32

heard, Vito Kunt was

25:34

soft-spoken but self-assured. And

25:37

like Francis, he came across

25:39

as maybe a little dry,

25:42

a thorough dot all your I's and

25:44

cross all your T's person. So

25:46

you can imagine the level tones he

25:49

must have used when meeting with Grunenthal's

25:51

representatives. In the end,

25:53

the Grunenthal people did agree to add

25:55

a label warning not to use controgandering

25:57

pregnancy. But then they left. and

26:00

Vidakant kept talking to the government people. This

26:03

time, without the Grunital crew in

26:05

the room, Vidakant presented his materials

26:07

more fully, and it

26:09

was decided. A

26:12

warning label wasn't enough. Quietly

26:15

withdrawing the drug from the market

26:17

would not be enough. No. As

26:19

one doctor at the meeting put it, it

26:22

must disappear out

26:24

of the last drawer in every house.

26:27

The word had to get out. The

26:30

state ministry of the interior would

26:32

immediately send cables to local health

26:34

departments telling them to stop the

26:36

sale of thalidomide and contact other

26:38

state governments to warn them as

26:40

well. Then

26:42

things really exploded. Someone

26:44

who'd heard Vidakant's speech at that

26:46

pediatrician's conference had gone to the

26:49

press, and on Sunday, November

26:51

26, the newspaper

26:53

Velt-Amzontag published a story that

26:55

shocked the public. The

26:58

headline, Birth Defects Due to

27:01

Pills? Grunital

27:03

completely loses

27:06

its mind in panic the second

27:08

they realize that the game is

27:10

up. Within a few hours of

27:12

the publication of that story, Grunital

27:14

announced that it was removing Contregan

27:16

from circulation until questions about Phocomelia

27:19

were resolved. And

27:23

the next day, Grunital sent

27:25

out warnings to doctors and pharmacies, but

27:27

they didn't say that this was a

27:29

potentially dangerous drug that they were withdrawing

27:31

to keep the public safe. Listen

27:34

to this wording from a message

27:36

they sent to the West German

27:38

Federal Medical Association. As

27:40

Grunital explained it, the decision

27:42

came, quote, because press

27:45

reports have undermined the

27:47

basis of scientific discussion.

27:50

But the pressure continued to mount. The

27:52

West German Ministry of Health put out

27:55

an urgent warning to women, telling them

27:57

the pill suspected in these births was

27:59

thalidomide. and urging them,

28:02

do not take this drug.

28:05

One other thing that happened, Grunenthal had

28:07

to alert all the companies that had

28:09

licensed this drug to. And

28:12

so on November 29th, William

28:14

S. Merrill received a cable

28:16

from Grunenthal letting the American

28:18

company know that there might

28:20

be an issue with thalidomide,

28:23

a possible association with

28:25

injured babies. They

28:27

were withdrawing it from the German market.

28:30

The next day, Joseph Murray

28:32

called the FDA. He

28:35

had some disquieting news. Next

28:39

time on The Devil in the Details. My

28:42

doctor said the abortion has been

28:44

canceled. They don't know who it

28:46

is, but the county attorney knows

28:48

that someone here in Arizona is

28:50

going to have an abortion and

28:52

they will do a citizen's arrest.

28:58

Ella Fetter was senior producer

29:00

for this episode and Deborah

29:02

Unger was senior managing producer.

29:04

Sarah Wyman was producer. Our

29:06

associate producer is Mila Rahim.

29:09

Sophia Levin and Eva McCullough

29:11

provided research support. Our

29:13

music was composed by Lizzie Yunnan, except

29:15

for the very first piece of music

29:17

you heard in this episode, which is

29:20

called Brit Pop by Scott Holmes Music.

29:22

We had fact-checking help from Lexia Tia.

29:25

Alexa Lim edited the audio. Morgan

29:27

Fus mastered the episode. Lisk Fang

29:29

created the art for the season

29:31

and Lily Weir did the art

29:34

design. Thank you, as always, to

29:36

my co-executive producer, Amy Scharf, and

29:38

to Eowyn Burtner, our program manager.

29:40

Thanks also to Jeff Del Visio

29:42

at our publishing partner, Scientific American.

29:45

We're distributed by PRX. Funding

29:48

for Lost Women of Science comes in

29:50

part by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation

29:53

and the Anne Wojcicki Foundation. For

29:56

a transcript of this episode or to learn

29:58

more about Frances Kelsey, please- go

30:00

to our website, lostwomenofscience.org, and

30:03

do not forget to hit

30:05

that all-important Omnipresent Donate button.

30:07

See you next week.

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