Bad Drug Makes Good

Elizabeth Clear, a 64-year-old housewife, had long been a 30-a-day smoker. But it still came as a shock when doctors running tests for a hiatus hernia at London's Whittington Hospital found something much more serious — lung cancer. And when consultant Siow Ming Lee proposed enrolling her in a trial using thalidomide to treat the disease, she got an even bigger shock. "That was the drug that damaged the children, wasn't it?" she asked. Despite her initial misgivings, she's now pleased she was given thalidomide — her cancer has been in remission for nearly a...