Thalidomide: the Drug That Caused the Nation a Lifetime of Sorrow (Essay Sample)
Thalidomide was a drug created in the 1960s that caused a great amount of grief to thousands of women and their children consequent to a simple oversight on the drug’s structure. Thalidomide was initially developed in a Swiss pharmaceutical company to be a sedative, but later transformed in order to treat morning sickness in women, or so they thought. This was a great unknown danger to pregnant women although it being specifically targeted at them by the pharmaceutical companies. This drug was an over-the-counter brand drug in order to settle pregnant woman’s stomachs when morning illness was onset, but little did the mothers know they were fatally poisoning their unborn children. This ridiculously small detail between the mirror image drugs of thalidomide caused much more grief and problems then the pharmaceutical companies and even the pregnant females anticipated. This lapse of judgement caused thousands of fatalities and miscarriages consequent to a simple yet critical detail.
In 1962, a turning point occurred for the FDA. It seemed the new morning sickness pill had a relationship with birth defects. An FDA analysist Dr. Francis O.Kelsey fought back against the FDA desperately trying to remove or improve the drug on the market despite the drug being FDA approved. The FDA had deemed it a safe and harmless drug for morning sickness for pregnant women. Due to insufficient testing and analysis in the FDA’s behalf, thousands of children suffered from birth defects such as absent limbs and deformities. Thalidomide is teratogenic and this means the drug can cross the placenta and cause potential threat to the developing foetus. This is defined as a drug that has a toxic effect on a developing embryo leading to malfunctioning of limbs or lack thereof. Most cases the unborn child would have been miscarried or aborted although studies showed that the drug did not have any direct effect on the mother itself. This great tragedy swept the nation leaving thousands of women heartbroken or struggling with deformities in their children. This unfortunate event opened the eyes of numerous scientists to the way drugs were being made and analysed. It was quickly realised that there must be more care taken when analysing the structural form of drugs when being produced.
This alarming event caused the FDA to carefully analyse every drug on a molecular perspective. The reason this drug was effective for morning sickness was because there was a ratio of the drug present in the correct form. Within the drug there was both forms of thalidomide present, the left form, and its mirror image the right form. This was later found to have two completely opposite effects on the unborn child. The S- enantiomer was found to be more embryo toxic then the other isomers of this drug. An enantiomer is a mirror image version of the drug that is superimposable and seems to cause the birth defects known to be associated with this drug. This form of the drug is said to be the most embryotoxic due to it superimpose ability and its chiral centre. This concept can be adapted and used to evaluate other drugs that may have S or R enantiomers with complete opposite effects. What the FDA didn’t realise was the importance in the mirror images of these drugs and did not do sufficient analysis on both forms of the drug, but even when they did start to have suspicions that the drug was causing birth fatalities, they kept selling the drug meanwhile testing was happening. The drug is still being sold to this day.
Thalidomide was found to have various other uses, such as treating skin conditions, cancer and even schizophrenia. Skin conditions such as leprosy lesions seem to have a positive response to thalidomide. It’s known to treat myeloma and myelofibrosis (bone marrow cancer), it also seems to be known to help people suffering with schizophrenia to continue living long and fulfilling lives, provided its known how vital it is that the person being treated does not fall pregnant.
Figure a: An R-enantiomer of thalidomide on the left and an S-enantiomer of thalidomide on the right.
Thalidomide is a synthetic derivative of glutamic acid with a glutarimide and a pthalidmide ring present. As you can see in figure a, they are remarkably similar in structure except from one super imposable bond. The R-enantiomer of thalidomide on the left has sedative effects where the S-enantiomer of thalidomide on the right has teratogenic effects. This drug is an analogue compound meaning it is derived from a lead or a starting structure. By changing the functional groups, rigidity and the saturation, the drug can be made more desirable or act in a certain way beneficial to the body. An analogue drug is similar in shape and activity to a lead compound which may be illegal or unsafe. By creating an analogue of this lead compound, the drug can be duped and can also be made safer and more active in the body.
It is evident that thalidomide caused a tremendous amount of tragedy for many families across the nation and there are still people alive today who survived these fatalities. There is a possibly those many females are still suffering the loss of their children whom they were carrying. In a sense there was a silver lining to this tragedy, it opened the eyes of many pharmaceutical scientists all across the nation and since then the FDA have implemented stricter quality control measures and more intensive drug screening to ensure an event similar to this does not happen again. In retrospect the drug that was specifically prescribed to these mothers happened to cause more harm then good and the burden of this misfortune lies solely in the FDA’s hands for not rigorously executing proper examination on these drugs before being put in the market. Although the drug can be used until this day for various diseases, it was certainly not worth the heartache caused to copious mothers who trusted this drug was safe for themselves and their offspring.
