The Devil in the Details - Chapter Four

Lost Women of Science

It’s the summer of 1962 and thalidomide has been off the market in Europe for months. But in the U.S., people are only just beginning to find out about the scandal. The Washington Post breaks the story and puts a picture of Frances Kelsey on the front page. She’s the hero who saved American lives. President John F. Kennedy gives her a medal and her image is splashed across newspapers around the country. At the end of the previous year, Merrell, the company that wanted to sell thalidomide in the U.S., had made a half-hearted attempt to contact some of the doctors who had been given millions of thalidomide samples for so-called clinical trials. Just how many pregnant women might have thalidomide in their medicine cabinets?