Dark Remedy: The Impact of Thalidomide and Its Revival as a Vital Medicine

Some drugs have become household names — penicillin, insulin, aspirin. Most are known — indeed, revered — as lifesavers. Thalidomide, too, falls into the category of well-known drugs, but for an entirely different reason. As a medicine that maimed rather than saved, it had atrocious effects on the unborn child that make it an object of terror and horror.Thalidomide appeared in the late 1950s — a decade of optimism about therapies, fueled largely by the success of penicillin during the Second World War. Postwar Western society was essentially at peace with the great infectious diseases, thanks to vaccines and . . .