Australian woman wins multi-million Thalidomide payout from Diageo

[dipsydoodle]

Source: Reuters

(Reuters) - An Australian woman has won a multi-million dollar payout from UK company Diageo Plc, the local distributor of the drug Thalidomide that caused birth defects in thousand of babies around the world in the 1960s, her lawyers said on Wednesday.

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The settlement with Rowe could pave the way for more than 100 other Thalidomide victims in Australia and New Zealand to receive compensation through a class action, the law firm Slater & Gordon said.

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Rowe's settlement follows a A$50 million (32.6 million pounds) payment Diageo agreed to make in 2010 to 45 Thalidomide victims in Australia and New Zealand, who sought help to cope with the mounting costs of care as they were living longer than expected.

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The cases have been closely watched in the United States, where a complaint has been filed against GlaxoSmithKline, Sanofi-Aventis, Avantor Performance Materials and Grunenthal, with several plaintiffs claiming their birth defects resulted from their mothers' use of Thalidomide.

Read more: http://uk.reuters.com/article/2012/07/18/uk-thalidomide-diageo-idUKBRE86H07620120718

[FailureToCommunicate]

1. "and (only) several cases in the US" Thanks must go again to Dr Francis Kelsey

Without her resistance to the big drug companies, there would have been tens of thousands of thalidomide babies in the US.



"Thalidomide was never approved by the FDA for use in the United States, and therein lies one of the FDA’s greatest success stories. In November of 1960, Dr. Francis Kelsey, the FDA official charged with overseeing thalidomide’s New Drug Application (NDA), was concerned that thalidomide might cause neuropathy, a nerve disease, in some users. She decided that the thalidomide NDA was incomplete and refused to approve it. This kept thalidomide tied up just long enough, since in 1961 the drug’s effect on newborn children became known. In 1962, President Kennedy presented Dr. Kelsey with a gold medal — the Distinguished Federal Civil Service Award — for her efforts."

http://leda.law.harvard.edu/leda/data/389/Scott_P_Glauberman.html

Thanks, Dipsydoodle, for the update.

[yurbud]

5. great sidenote to this!

[HIlton Brackett]

2. Thalidomide

is still being used in the U.S. and has FDA approval. in the treatment of Multiple myeloma.

[dipsydoodle]

3. Yes

The issue originally was the absense of warnings.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

4. Yes, and for Hansen's Disease (leprosy), but not during pregnancy

The U.S. (and probably most Western countries) now require drugs to be tested to see whether they cause birth defects.

The problems in Europe, Australia, and other places occurred because thalidomide was being prescribed for morning sickness during pregnancy. The period when morning sickness is most likely coincides with the period in which the fetus's arms and legs are forming.

Suddenly thousands of babies were being born with no arms or legs or malformed arms or legs.

Thanks to those silly government regulators, we were spared that epidemic.