I saw thalidomide mentioned, and many anti-vaxxers cite thalidomide as a reason for refusing Covid vaccines. I'll repost here what I've posted about thalidomide in the US. Anti-vaxxers often tell just part of the thalidomide story.
Thalidomide was undergoing an UNREGULATED corporate clinical trial in the US in 1961, conducted by the Richardson-Merrell corporation. An FDA regulator named Frances Kelsey saw the application from Richardson-Merrell, studied the drug's effects in Germany, and halted the US trial.
https://embryo.asu.edu/pages/us-regulatory-response-thalidomide-1950-2000
In July 1962, Kefauver alerted the press of thalidomide's teratogenic effects to revive his bill, which he later claimed was losing momentum in Congress. Many public figures expressed shock and outrage when they learned that during thalidomide's period of pending approval, Richardson-Merrell had already distributed greater than 2.5 million thalidomide tablets to over 1,200 physicians, who in turn gave them to approximately 20,000 patients in clinical trials. At least 207 of these patients were pregnant at the time of taking thalidomide seventeen of whom later reported having deformed infants.
From these events, the public scrutinized the FDA's policies and methods for drugs. The thalidomide tragedy, as many call it, galvanized Congress into passing the 1962 Kefauver-Harris Amendments to the 1938 Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, hereafter called the 1962 Amendments. The 1962 Amendments went into effect on 7 February 1963 and required that for any sponsor of a drug, usually a company, that planned to investigate that drug clinically, that sponsor had to provide the FDA with a detailed outline of the study.
Thalidomide in the US was
halted by government regulators and resulted in much tougher regulation of the drug industry worldwide. Thalidomide is a
total success story for US government regulation of drugs. Don't let folks mislead you with just a part of the thalidomide story; get all the facts.
