the worst drug disaster in history would spread through more than forty six countries and produce 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 szell to feel an age twenty three gave birth to her first child her husband was with the time and it was a quiet day. and then i lay back and was relaxed and some and somebody whispered into my ear is your husband not all right and i was here white awake and i said. what what what has happened to my baby is anything wrong you know 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 card 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 a part 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 fall and

. 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 a 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 ploys had taken home a sample which he gave to his pregnant wife the baby would be the first of six other than my baby's possibly more born chagrin in thousand workers in the years ahead but the company ignored the early warning signals in their midst no that's 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 holds us to short second nine months after the first deformed baby was born grown and launched the lynn abide on to the german market under the brand name contra gone good 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 so little my became the second best selling drug next to aspirin. but linda's shoulder 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 want it i think we took it up and i said giving up. her husband soon. did

a professor of obstetrics dr video kinde 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 where the end of the road there has been a very sad incident and then he went there and drink the darn shot first thing he did was showing the picture of means that this is my son do yourselves have 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 local manufacturing the distillers company as in germany distillers had received reports of deformed babies but had been assured by green and file that the drug was completely safe. louise mason was one of five hundred thirty three little my 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 hadn't any negs and my dad said it was like little bugs. 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 mum was only twenty one.

and she was advised by doctors to put new y. 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. 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 arm has 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 wants. and the next i went to see him personally 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 first 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 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 poor leave 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. doubt 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 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 seldom might onto the american market and was allowed to conduct clinical trials on patients across the country now it wasn't a clinic 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 grown in thousand advertising campaign was paying huge dividends the company's owner and executives were making fortunes over night 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 that it might kill sold worldwide the drug was such a success for growing and. that they started making money hand over fist. it was on 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 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 running on the cells of the mother 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 know that they just focused on selling more the drug and it really was some time to prescott hold of it. and they knew it was going to go public but they finally backed off from the greed. what. they put themselves on the line they did accept the reject. so when you want to be president. some want to. have to go right to the press this is what them before three of them or ten people. interested always in

the water. that whole russia gate hoax never got any traction then no prob but it's great troll bay and i think trump is pleased that he got seats in the senate and he'll get barking mad nancy pelosi hitting the russia gave them every single day which will drive ratings for rachel maddow but it will do nothing to help them win twenty . i've been saying the numbers means they matter us of the one trillion dollars and. more than ten. this. eighty five percent of you want to be rich. point six percent market saw thirty percent from the highs last year some with four hundred to five hundred three first record first shot hit him because he rose to twenty thousand

dollars. china's building two point one billion dollars a i industrial park but don't let the numbers overwhelm. the only numbers you need to remember is one to one business show you know ford to miss the one and only boom box. what's. going. on nov twenty eighth one thousand nine hundred sixty one a day after the thalidomide scandal made headlines in west germany. it was withdrawing the drug from the market even if its latest the spring of nineteen sixty one. had taken the drug off the market then they would have spent half the bases. of on

glazzard his disability weren't so severe but as a young child niko had trouble adjusting to his short arms. because you know it as he's feeling a fine been on venice from the journey some of the most it's been a boring them cops on foot off the conneaut. and the fear decides to underpin dolphin bomb took it on notice how far far. down from manhunt. you know at least globish going to florida is. almost a. full. all full the one. in england. louise mason didn't see her parents and three siblings for months at a time. i was left alone most of the time my parents and hundreds of the children

no way that they could even move my nan it was my crime i was oh so they just stopped coming. i went home three weeks a year. for week one week in the summer making a christmas movie easter every holiday was my know your brothers and sisters again . in your chances to catch you 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. that granted having the larger 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 a lifer. 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 that 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 a back to those periods they complained a better in writing the threatened global 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 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 a model of a body more all the models on how many are artificial or not. and 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 told them hey you are doing me any good. and i was like shut off. i was a blunt it was. we know what we're doing you don't. most the other miners don't use artificial limbs today but eileen 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 artificial legs

a lot of things go wrong you've got to go around conducting 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 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 quinto had as the chair of a man convicted of mesmo slavery. in a 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 burger 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 a 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 or is the trial of until. well canada loudly celebrated its one. birthday and nine hundred sixty seven peace and maybe my family's suffered in silence a few parents had committed suicide others became alcoholics and some were having severe psychiatric drug. 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 what's integration he's a kid he needs to grow up 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 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. but i'd never heard that word before it was never used in this house. it was never used in this neighborhood that 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 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 publicised opposition to the compensation created problems for louise and her care institutions up until then i was not one of the crowd but often. i was picked on. louise escaped 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 mason's 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 to fill it in my dues 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 shelter hale 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 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 father and a lover and i have short arms and that's it and if people have problems it's accepting me are i have problems to interact with me because i have short arms it's their problem it's not mine. join me every thursday on the alex simon show and i'll be speaking. yes well the

world of politics sports business i'm show business i'll see event. pranking gave americans a lot of job opportunities i needed to come up here to make some money i could make twenty five thousand dollars as a teacher or i could make fifty thousand dollars a year girl with a truck so i chose to drive truck people rush to a small town in north dakota was an unemployment rate of zero percent like gold rush is very very similar to a gold rush but this beautiful story ended with pollution and devastation a lot of people have left here i don't know too many people here and just slow down so much they lost their jobs that laid off the american dream is changing that's not what it used to be. and that's a tough reality to deal with. in

a world of big partisan move lot and conspiracy it's time to wake up to dig deeper to hit the stories that mainstream media refuses to tell more than ever we need to be smarter we need to stop slamming the door on the bats and shouting past each other it's time for critical thinking it's time to fight for the middle for the truth the time is now for watching closely watching the hawks. game all that attention to the test on every carousel.

representatives of israel and palestine trade accusations that the un security council over the latest escalation of violence in the gaza strip. reports to the parliament's raises the european weaponry ending up in the hands of terrorists in iraq syria. is a high ranking woman in france takes her own life as opposition parties blame the government for a wave of suicides on the full. for the latest on these stories head to. stay with us today for the cause to reports looking at the impact of the recent midterm elections.