until we found. and they said yes my mom was only twenty one and she was advised by doctors to. knew why 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 bad midwives and doctors were killing disabled children. in the hospitals and the delivery rooms on a large scale in britain. in germany and if they're

probably everywhere else. in canada another armless baby was spared by a poor ukrainian family in a 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 i took one look and i thought no wonder nobody wanted. and the next i went to see him percy had

a bath and dressed and hid and looked perfectly. well although in favor of taking him oh boy. but. it was a baby with nobody wanted i'm sure we're going to. turn out ok. my life story shifted the moment that sophie and peter my birth father gave 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 coupled 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 and said that's 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 of the little mind babies born in cincinnati where an american drug company richards and merrill had their headquarters like the german drug company merrill promoted the drug as completely safe even during pregnancy like green and merrill had no evidence to back this up. merrill applied to the federal drug administration in one nine hundred sixty for approval to bring so little mite onto the american market and was allowed to conduct clinical trials on patients across the country now it wasn't 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 already to go through with the drug trade to prescribe it like crazy. during this time richardson merril

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 and companies 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 to live in mine and received a bonus for every thought in my pills sold worldwide the drug was such a success for growing them. that i started making money hand over fist. it was on a percentage of profit. from modestly our. to having so much money pouring in he could've bought himself a new mercedes every month one hundred sixty one really he's making twenty times

his salary in terms of a 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 riding on the selves of with him on 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 a rush at gruntal to investigate to get to the bottom of it to put warnings on the tribe to withdraw to take all sorts of course since i did not know that they just focused on selling more the drugs and it really was some time tell the press got hold of it. and they knew it was going to go public but they finally backed off and agreed.

to leak floors only guarded the deal. and when you. look at that it was most of. the back. to school stuff. just chill.

with no make this manufactured consensus public well. when the ruling classes protect themselves. with the crime. we can all middle routes to. the real news. and that if this guy like he. had to get that all dead i

would think of his image and add to the money add that one of my leave you to get there. you did it. did it come out they do it now and that is out there it is how much of the island i think after. the lot about how the now growing so are in so many. super now down miles out of town a lot of the model is full of. oh. yeah without a doubt about it yeah yeah and i could see it as high as by the amount and actually i'm not so. good that they did those about the so yeah.

but even the last and all of the little. everything you did that. i forgot to try to game it's all about speed look at goldman sachs could figure out a way to go backwards in time and still money from trades in the history they would do it but the second best option is to just increase the speed in the here and now to steal better much rapid pace. on november twenty eighth one thousand nine hundred sixty one a day after the thalidomide scandal many headlines in west germany. it was

withdrawing the drug from the market even if first latest the spring of nineteen sixty was. taking the drug off the market then they would have sped off the boat. on glazunov disabilities weren't so severe but as a young child nico had trouble adjusting to his short arms. thanks to his continued few combined don't because it is complicated also because you know it as he's feeling a fine unbidden from purely somebody puts him in a boring when cook saw him for the conneaut. who fearless are still under the. gun from. you know least globish.

full. moon. in england louise mason didn't see her parents and three siblings for months at a time. i was left alone most the time my parents of the children there's no way that they could leave them with my nan it was my crime i was oh so they just are coming. i went home three weeks a year. for week mommy can a summer make a christmas i'm a big easter every holiday was my getting to know your brothers and sisters again. in your kansas gadgil and alvin law's parents decided the best way to get their arm listened to cope with life was to turn his toes into fingers for hours album was

given manual task to perform with the seat. grab it having the arms of the exact rather simple disability very complicated disability and i'd be lying if i did say it was a lot of work a lot of work a lot of time spent by myself very long and very afraid 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 tolls 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 that 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 the. 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 those periods they complained of better in writing that threatens local proceedings they 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 to the hope that all of us have for our children in august one thousand sixty two. john f. kennedy awarded the highest civilian honor an american can receive to dr francis kelsey so kill c. really if you know. who 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 all the body more all the models and how many are artificial or not. and why why why would i leave them when there was no good reason not one good reason. to use them for years i told them hey you are doing me any good. and i was like shut up. i was a blunt it was. because we know what we're doing you don't. most

the other miners don't use artificial limbs today but eileen cronin is an exception she wears artificial legs every day to get around. i was born with both legs missing from the knees down according to my mother i did it down to the legs pretty quickly. if you have. you know artificial 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 a 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 drug 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 a nasty war criminal known as the devil's. chemist 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 green and sells board of directors in one nine hundred seventy one so in the nineteen seventies corona towhead as the chair of 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. use of it was the personal

lawyer for a good one thousand or herrmann verts but in december nine hundred sixty six berger resigned suddenly became justice minister in the province where the trial was being held. defense lawyer. ended up with a government responsibility overseeing the conduct of the trial. away from the trial a secret deal was worked out between granting thousand 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 suit against her and so taken as a whole the trial was. the trial of until.

well canada loudly celebrated its one. hundredth birthday and nine hundred sixty seven police and they remind 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 alvin law's parents had run into opposition from the local grade school when they tried to enroll him school says wait he's got no arms he can't go to school they don't have such a thing as integration on data on what's integration he's a kid in instability go to school he needs to learn and it's to be educated he can write he can read what else do you need this school finally agreed to take alvin

but soon afterwards he ran into a reaction his teachers expected and fear i came home and i was very upset because somebody had called me. i've 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 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 blonde hair and you we're born. in england one hundred ninety seven families of thalidomide children are 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 a wealthy london art dealer and father of louise now i came under tremendous

pressure i received threats all 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 publicised opposition to the compensation created problems for louise and her care institution up until then i was not 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 i as opposed to go. david mason's campaign succeeded in increasing by six times the drug companies original offer to the parents i did pay a heavy price personally pots. if i hadn't paid that price the slit in my daughter's wouldn't have got the compensation when they got the compensation so i think it was worth. unlike louise mason who rarely saw her

mother during childhood yeah i'm sure to hell 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 sure she said cure everything you want to achieve in your life you're going to achieve it i have absolutely no doubt and when i 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 little martin for a spot 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 fan.