Moreau’s Other Island

I remembered the thalidomide scandal well. The drug had been manufactured as a tranquilliser by a German company and licensed by chemical firms all over the world. The side-effects of the drug had not been properly researched; its teratogenicity had only become apparent when babies were born deformed. When the drug was administered to women in the early stages of pregnancy, it had the power of passing through the placental barrier and malforming the growth of the foetus. From eight to ten thousand children were born defective in various parts of the globe.

What made me recall the case so clearly was that over twenty years ago, when there was a court case in Canada regarding the amount of compensation to be paid one of the thalidomide children, my mother had said to me, ‘Cal, you were born at the time when thalidomide was available all round the world. We are just lucky that the States has sane laws about testing drugs – so that when I went to Doc Harris for a tranquilliser during pregnancy, he prescribed something safe, or otherwise you might have been born without your proper limbs like other babies your age in England and elsewhere.’

I said to Dart, ‘That whole case was a piece of criminal negligence.’ I could but stare at him, ashamed to move my eyes away.

‘My mother was prescribed Distaval, as thalidomide was called in England, and used it for a week only. One week! That week covered the forty-eighth day of her pregnancy. When I was born, I had these severe abnormalities on which you now gaze with such pleasure.

‘If the doctors had had any sense, they would never have let me live.’

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