Thalidomide

[Rubystars]

I was really upset the other day when I found out that more thalidomide affected babies have been born in Brazil. Apparently the drug is widely available on the black market there, and a lot of undereducated or uneducated people are getting it.

I read a heartbreaking story of a Brazilian woman with little education who gave birth to a baby with no arms and legs, just a head and torso, because she had taken thalidomide during the critical period. She said she wanted to kill herself after she'd found out what she'd done to her baby.

In the USA and Canada there are really strong restrictions barring this drug from being used by pregnant women or women who could become pregnant. Any woman of childbearing age who takes it is monitored very closely and must have a pregnancy test before using it and must be on birth control while using it.

The same kind of controls just aren't in place in Brazil and innocent babies are being born deformed when they in most cases would have been normal and healthy.

I wish there was something that I could do as an American to help stop that stuff.



This page has some pictures of some of the more recent victims, caution, it could be disturbing:
http://www.thalidomideuk.com/worldofthalidomide.htm

[Boozy]

What does thalidomide do? I'm not familiar with it.

[Rubystars]

It was/is a painkiller, anti-inflammatory. It's now used for things like pain associated with leprosy and cancers and a few other things.

Back when the original wave of deformed babies happened, it was being taken by pregnant women specifically for morning sickness. Morning sickness happens at a time in the pregnancy when limbs and other important parts of the fetal body are forming, like organs.

Thalidomide caused a lot of babies to be born with a defect called phocomelia, which made them have very short arms and/or legs that sometimes looked like flippers. There are a lot of other defects associated with the drug too, such as being born with no limbs, no ears, no eyes, etc.

Even in adult patients who take it, it can sometimes cause irreversible nerve damage in the extremities.

[AFPheonix]

It's occasionally used these days for nausea in cancer patients that isn't helped by other, more conventional means.


I hate to be a total shit, but Brazil isn't a totally 3rd world country. It pisses me off when people just pop things in their mouths without a care, not bothering to find out what it is they're taking and what potential effects it will have. I don't know what city this woman was from, or if she was a country bumpkin or what, but didn't she like, oh I don't know, consult a doctor before taking it?

A little common sense goes a long way with medication. Especially when you've got a baby on the way.

[Rubystars]

I tried to find the story again and I did:

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/ar...980896,00.html

"Bundled in a stark white hospital blanket, Rafael looks like any other month- old baby. But when his mother, Luciene das Dores, unwraps the snug cover, the sight is shocking: Rafael has no arms or legs. "I got very upset and started to cry when I first saw him," says Das Dores, 23, a part-time cleaning woman who lives in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. "When I saw him with only a head and a torso, I was devastated. I wanted to kill myself." She could not help feeling guilty: unaware that she might hurt her baby, she had taken the powerful sedative thalidomide during her pregnancy."

I feel sorry for this woman because whoever she got the pills from didn't tell her anything about them or what they could do to harm her baby. Maybe they even used the same idiotic phrases that were used in the original distribution, such as claiming it was "non-toxic". I know that she should have asked more questions, but that's easy for us to say when we have more education and more learned skepticism when it comes to things like this.

Here's a really relevant quotation:

"But some doctors give out prescriptions without telling patients of the danger, much less keeping them under observation. In other cases, the patients, who are often poor and barely literate, ignore or misunderstand what they are being told."

They need to be shown pictures of thalidomide babies before they take it. Images would stick in their memory better and would help them to understand better. That isn't even really good enough IMO, but it would help. They need a limited distribution program like there is in Canada and the USA to keep babies safe.

[AFPheonix]

That article is more than 10 years old.

[Rubystars]

Which means there is now a 13 year old with just a head and torso for absolutely no good reason.

I realize the article is a little dated, but the reality is there should never have been a second generation wave of thalidomide babies. The drug is still being distributed in Brazil and even though there are some precautions, they're not enough.

That also doesn't stop the black market selling of the drugs.

These problems have never really been corrected.

Here's a younger article about the problem:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/brazil/sto...180879,00.html

[Banrion]

If these governments can't control the black market sale of millions of kilo's of opiates, how would you recommend they control the significantly smaller black market on things such as Thalidomide? It's not a large enough problem for the government to put time and money into. As long as the drug is manufactured, people will continue to use it without being informed, or careless of the possible effects.

[Rubystars]

I'm not sure. I've said before that all drugs should be legal, but that doesn't mean I don't think they should be regulated.

Maybe it would be best just to try to get as much public information as possible out about that drug and its effects. People should go out to areas where it's suspsected or known that the drug is being sold illegally and distribute information about thalidomide babies complete with pictures, and warning of which names the drug might be sold under (like Softenol), or for what uses it might be sold (headaches, pain from leprosy) etc.

In some ways it might be easier to control a smaller black market. I'm sure the drug dealers care a lot more about losing their opiate business than they do thalidomide.