and produced up to twenty thousand badly deformed babies worldwide. but historians today single out one birth in one nine hundred sixty one that changed the course of history in hamburg germany linda shield hill and age twenty three gave birth to her first child her husband wasn't with it at the time and it was quiet day out. and then lay back and was relaxed and some i mean somebody whispered into my ear is your husband not all right but i was here white awake and i said. what what's got what has happened to my baby is anything wrong here she said just. let's say. without any emotion oh yeah he's just got short arms and i like a child would have asked possibly i said and aren't a calling anymore and shit this current grow this will be like it is now.

and then i felt like i was beaten to death. a doctor gave the first time mother some friendly advice just get another child. like forget about him you know. i'm a way to get about him and shortly afterwards linda's husband arrived and gave her some bad news he'd been keeping from her six weeks earlier his sister had given birth to a baby with similar deformities it looks alike like our child there must be something that is the same origin the same difficulty the same problem in the background and we'll find it and we'll search and we won't stop until we find out how the last.

the epidemic of deformed babies began five and a half years earlier on christmas day nine hundred fifty six with the birth of the first victim. in the small town of germany a mother had taken a new drug called for little mite being developed by a local drug company can be grown into her husband like other grown in thousand boys had taken home a sample which he gave to his pregnant wife the baby would be the first of six other my babies possibly more born to grin and thousand workers in the years ahead but their company ignored the early warning signals in their midst know that spirit good old women action didn't investigate didn't talk to the mom didn't go to the hospital didn't look at medical records didn't contact experts there were multiple opportunities for group talk to cup holders asked short taken nine months after the first deformed baby was born grown and launched the lynn abide on to the german

market under the brand name contraband going in thousand aggressive sales force whose motto was succeed at any cost continue to promote the drug cardigan they claimed was a safe sedative especially for pregnant women suffering from morning sickness sales zoomed and a little my became the second best selling drug next to aspirin. but linda shield to helen and her husband carl hammond were determined to find out what caused their son's short arms months later they were no closer to finding an answer i know my husband had times when he said. we don't make it i think we have to get up and i said i'm not giving up. her husband soon contacted a professor of obstetrics dr vidocq and lens who had received a few reports of deformed babies my father and professor lance they travel to germany and their road folks bargain and they went from one small village to another and asked are there any children with short legs or shut down and those

kids were hidden away at the time in the small villages and he asked and restaurants and bars and the local police office and everybody said no not in our town and then he showed a picture of me and said this is my bari and can i please repeat my question and then they said well at the end of the road there has been a very sad incident and then he went down and drink the darn shot first thing he did was showing the picture of means that this is my son diaz who has a kid like this and the people burst into tears and and children and in my children's were. called to the day our flight literally. in england was being sold under the brand name distal by the country's largest liquor manufacturer the distillers company as in germany distillers had received reports of deformed babies but had been assured by grin and the drug was completely

saying. louise mason was one of five hundred thirty thalidomide babies born in england over a six and a half year period louise only learned about the circumstances of her birth by reading her father's bestselling autobiography i haven't got any arms and i had an exam and my dad said it was like a little flower buds. in know from my arms and from my lips my dad had a look at me. and. he said my. god you're not going to let this baby live. and they say yes my mom was only twenty one and she was advised by doctors to put me away and concentrate on having another family. after eleven days in hospital her parents

took louise to an institution for handicapped children where she would spend the next eighteen years of her life but louise was fortunate her father had not asked another doctor to end her life because i'm questionable. that midwives and doctors were killing disabled children. in the hospitals and the delivery rooms on a large scale in britain. in germany and if there probably ever wrote. in canada another armless baby was spared by a poor ukrainian family in rural cisco. years later alvin law learned how horrified his natural parents were when he was born ultimately it was the perturb grandmother who didn't want to have anything to do with us she said you're not going to bring that devil baby home with you ease he's deformed because of

a curse. the armless baby wasn't taken home after doctors warned he would never lead a normal life but after six weeks an elderly couple jack and hilda law who had already raised their own children volunteered as foster parents and got their first look at alan and i took one look and i thought no wonder nobody wants. and the next i went simplicity had a bath and dressed and hid and looked better told. while i was in favor of taking him away with greater. but. it was a baby would know what he wanted i'm sure we're going to. turn out ok. my life story shifted the moment that sophie and peter my birth father d me up. that that that is a profound chapter shift in my life because i went to live with the laws my

life became this life. back. in cincinnati ohio and deeply religious roman catholic couple with six children were expecting another normal birth my mother's story is that when i was born they were not at all prepared and the doctor said joy your baby doesn't have any legs. so she says that she took the baby me and she said well eileen is my four leaf clover. i have a sibling who told me that my father cried and that when he came home he handed me to my siblings and everyone got very upset and they

said take it away. someone ripped off the blankets instead acts not a baby or something to that effect that's not our sister. that was what i was taught. as a young child. people. eileen cronan was one of several follow the my babies born in cincinnati where an american drug company richardson merrill had their headquarters like the german drug company merrill promoted the drug as completely safe even during pregnancy like grin and cell merrill had no evidence to back this up. merrill applied to the federal drug administration in one nine hundred sixty for approval to bring seldom might onto the american market and was allowed to conduct clinical trials on patients across the country now it wasn't really

a clinical trial at all what it was was a marketing campaign trumped up to look like a clinical trial michael magazine is an australian lawyer and former investigative reporter who spent years researching the thalidomide disaster what merrill wanted to do was to familiarize doctors with a drug so that once they got approval they would have doctors all ready to go through with the drugs ready to prescribe it like crazy during this time richardson merrill handed out two and a half million dollars to my pills to thousands of doctors in the united states in canada. in germany going thousand advertising campaign was paying huge dividends the company's owner and executives were making fortunes overnight especially heinrich mukhtar going in thousand research director. during the war mokhtar served as a natty doctor developing vaccines which were tested on jewish prisoners in the book and vowed concentration camps many of whom died after the war mokhtar joined grin

and nine years later he invented thalidomide and received a bonus for every thought in my pill sold my world won the drug was such a success for growing and. that i started making money hand over fist. it was all a percentage of profit. from modestly are. to having so much money pouring in he could have bought himself a new mercedes every month but only sixty one really he's making twenty times his salary in turnover percentage so he's getting this massive massive bonus he's become a ludicrously rich man on the back of the mod. what would a man want that with a history of wartime experimentation strong personality a massive income rotting on the selves of with mud what would one expect that he would do when confronted with reports of nerve damage and other side effects but it is not surprising to me that there was not i rushed to investigate to get to the bottom of it to put warnings on the drug to withdraw to take all sorts of course

and so i did not it just focused on something more the drug and it really was from time to press got a hold of it. and they knew it was going to go public but they finally backed off and agreed i think hiding this catastrophe of falling in britain for the past fifteen years or so was its connection to the e.u. and the ability to have the teller currency and yet passport rights into the e.u. you take those away and you have essentially greece on steroids and all those banks and the e.u. and america are going to attack the u.k. play and drive into bankruptcy. the new global economic war is unfolding in the realm of education the right to education being supplanted by the right to access education. high education is becoming just another product that can be pulled and sold but it's not just about education anymore it's also about running a business and what you good. luck with these souls. really couldn't

be. more is the place of students in this business model before college i was more now i'm i'm extremely more higher education the new global economic war. what politicians do. you put themselves on the line to get accepted or rejected. so when you want to be president. or some want to. have to go right to be pros this is what before three of them or can't be good. i'm interested always in the waters in the. question. get it. right we're

all set to start in five guys this year has a signal. to. the story to talk about the no fly list just didn't right after the war's explorers one knew it would have their. board of record. to say well we know. how they illustrate and told them to sophie and tell i'm so three shevardnadze said today we've got lots to talk about in our program and our gas who all the rocket. on nov twenty eighth one thousand nine hundred sixty one a day after the thalidomide scandal made headlines in west germany and sell announced it was withdrawing the drug from the market even at first latest the

spring of nineteen sixty one. they had taken the drug off the market then they would have sped off the boat. meiklejohn glazzard was disabilities weren't so severe but as a young child nico had trouble adjusting to his short arms. and say thanks to his can too few could find on because it is complicated also because you know it as he's feeling or found in venice frumpy going to some of the most it's a bit of a boring one corpse on for all to connote. and the fear decides to undo the killed off and on to create the notice of our. own. informal hunched. you know at least globe is shit. thank you for this.

in england louise mason didn't see her parents and three siblings for months at a time. i was that alone most of the time my parents had other children there's no way that they could leave them with my nan it was my crime i was old so they just stopped coming. i went home three weeks a year. for week by week in the summer christmas easter every quality was like getting to know your brothers and sisters again. in new york since the schedule and alvin law's parents decided the best way to get their arm less son to cope with life was to turn his tones into fingers for hours

alvin was given manual task to perform with his feet. grab it having no ours it was a rather simple disability it's very complicated disability and i'd be lying if i didn't say it was a lot of work a lot of work a lot of time spent by myself very long very. very frustrated but i think it was the character that was built by my parents especially by my parents. that allowed me to not really think that i was all that different. it's not an easy thing to get dressed but. again it goes back to the basic theory of my life and that is to i have someone look after me or do i look after myself. but more than anything i think it's a mindset you know that ok there is a lot of people in our world that have wave bigger problems than i have so that i have to spend

a little extra effort putting my clothes on so what. the moment i started using my toast and my feet and my legs was the same moment i ceased to have a disability. in the united states there would have been thousands of a lot of my babies like ellen law except for the actions of one woman dr francis kelsey a canadian born doctor and pharmacologist had just joined the federal drug administration when she received an application to bring thalidomide onto the american market here was a drug who looked like it should be no problem but at the same time there was just a feeling to do something in the leader of the absence of. cause of concern the application came from richardson merrill one of america's oldest drug companies known years ago for its best selling product vix cough drops merrill

poured on the pressure they contacted the f.d.a. fifty times they went behind her back to us here is the complaint a better in writing that threatens libel proceedings i pushed and pushed and pushed and she was resolute she was unbelievably tough. but i know that we're all at most indebted to dr kelsey the relationship in the hope that all of us have for our children in august one thousand nine hundred two. john f. kennedy awarded the highest civilian honor an american can receive to dr francis kelsey so kill c. really. for the mother because. i come home from the playground one day my mom says honey good news you're going to get arms dear i mean you just remember a day like that right i thought we were going shopping you know arms or us i don't know. i was very confused they had hooks and they were made of metal and plastic

and wood i mean i couldn't take off my shoes i wasn't allowed to use my feet can imagine how weird that was. so this became an interesting life half of my life was being elven law the kid with no arms the other half of my life was this terrible victim of the little guy. i lost my sense of what was right stick these arms around me on my own body more all the more doesn't have any are artificial or not so why don't why why would i leave them when there was no good reason not one good reason . to use them for years i tol away you are doing me any good. and i was like shut off. i was a bluff it was. we know what we're doing here don't. most of the miners don't use artificial limbs today but i lean cronan is an exception

she wears artificial legs every day to get around. i was born with both legs from the knees down according to my mother i did it down to the legs pretty quickly. and if you have. you know martial legs a lot of things go wrong you've got to go around conducting your life and yet you know you've got a skin infection and you've got to play your leg on when he couldn't do me i put the leg on i guess that's not always the best thing to do but. that's what i do. in margin nine hundred sixty seven the owner and eight executives of growth all the german company were charged with criminal negligence premeditated bodily harm and manslaughter. among the defendants was heinrich mokhtar the natty doctor who made a fortune inventing fellow to mind. another chop green and it was amorous

and natty war criminal known as the devil's can. missed ambrose was convicted of war crimes he committed at auschwitz for which he served four years in prison but after the war the chemist found no shortage of employers including dow chemical j. peter grace and the u.s. army's chemical corps before he became chairman of groan and sells board of directors in one nine hundred seventy one so in the not in seventies grotto had as the chair of its board a man convicted of mesmo the slavery. in man who hired nancy war criminals like ambrose and was owner. verts was a member of the local nattie party in his hometown before the second world war a service for which he was handsomely rewarded by it like you said it was the personal lawyer for a good one thousand or herrmann verts but in december nine hundred sixty six noir

burger resigned suddenly became justice minister in the province where the trial was being held hostage defense lawyer. ended up with a government responsibility overseeing the conduct of the trial. to stay. away from the trial as secret deal was worked out between granting thousand owner herrmann birds and the provincial government the secret deal was only revealed when the trial was dramatically stopped after two and a half years. in return for having all the serious criminal charges against its owner and executives dropped the company agreed to pay the victims lifetime pensions ranging from thirty to one hundred forty dollars a month as well as a small one time payment but in order to collect the money the little mite has had to agree not to launch any further suits against her and so taken as a whole the trial was a glorious look the trial of her until. now.

well canada loudly celebrated its one hundred. birthday and nine hundred sixty seven police and they demand families suffered in silence a few parents had committed suicide others became alcoholics and some were having severe psychiatric. that's a little my children were now school age but the question that plagued medical and educational authorities was what type of school should they enter some experts recommended schools for the handicapped while others advise the regular education system. in new york since the scatman album laws parents had run into opposition from the local grade school when they tried to enroll him school says wait he's got no arms you can't go to school you don't have such a thing as integration and our going once integration he's a kid he needs to go to go to school he needs to learn and it's to be educated you can write you can read what else do you need this school finally agreed to take out

that but soon afterwards he ran into a reaction his teachers expected and feared i came home and i was very upset because somebody had called me. and i'd never heard that word before it was never used in this house. it was never used in this neighborhood but i go to school there was no kids called me so i had to run home and i was a little freaked out you know mom called me down and that's when our first remember hearing those words that some people are born with black hair and some people are born with blond hair and you we're born. in england one hundred ninety seven families of thalidomide children were suing distillers the british company which had distributed the drug distillers made a ridiculously low offer of compensation and warned that the money would be paid out only if all parents agreed to the lifetime the five families refused the offer they were led by david mason and wealthy london art dealer and father of luis now i came under tremendous pressure i received threats on my life i had

a police guard for a period of time i had anonymous phone calls i had anonymous letter. you know threats from parents her father as well publicized opposition to the compensation created problems for louise and her care institution up until then i was like one of the crowd but often. i was picked on. louise escape the hostility of our classmates when her father took her out to participate in publicized events for his campaign i was used as a as opposed to go. david maisons campaign succeeded in increasing by six times the drug company's original offer to the parents i did pay a heavy pot. shots. if i hadn't paid that price facility my daughter's wouldn't have got the compensation when they got the compensation so i think it was well. unlike louise mason who rarely saw her mother during childhood young children hill and formed

a close bond with his mother from birth and her unwavering support and encouragement were critical in his career decision she never lost hope she'll she said cure everything you want to achieve in your life you're going to achieve it i have absolutely no doubt and where night when i turned up with their with the idea that. that i wanted to be a doctor everybody told me you should not it's not a very good idea you cannot do that you will have severe problems she said son do your own thing if that's what you want to do you're going to match yon is now an emergency room doctor in switzerland i don't consider my condition as a major issue i mean i'm not a philip martin for a start on the first but i'm a man i'm trying to be a good doctor and trying to be a good husband and i'm a father and a lover and i have short arms and that's it and if people have problems it's excepting the. i have problems to interact with me because i have short arms it's

their problem it's not mine. one else seemed wrong why don't i just don't call. me old. get to shape out these days become active. and engaged because the trail. when so many find themselves worlds apart we choose to look for common ground. seventy four design submissions. seven thousand pilings. to join judges. eight hundred sixty nonstop days of. the

russian w.b. . under russian stuff. show you how. long the crimea bridge was built. witnessed the construction moving you need to transport. that will help the crimea . most of those you know won't go for more familiar with it a bit but it's clear. i don't. have.

it. for this hour here on. the hales his helsinki with a lot of success though unleashing a storm of criticism from all ends of the political spectrum and of course the media. i don't know which side is the bride in which side of that is the groom who are sort of feels like run away you have been watching for help for the most disgraceful performances by an american president today's press conference in helsinki was one of the most disgraceful performances by an american president in memory facebook confirms that. interested in treason when targeting russian uses affectively laying russians on the happy with the government open to foreign propaganda. the death toll in one of the time.