Medicine: Thalidomide Homicide

Jurymen and spectators in a darkened Belgian courtroom last week gasped with shock as a professor of clinical medicine showed lantern slides of babies who had been born without arms or legs, or with other crippling deformities because their mothers had taken thalidomide early in pregnancy. The young mother in the prisoner's box covered her eyes. She had seen such a baby last May. It was her own, and she had killed it. Now she was on trial for her life. Being tried with her for conspiracy were her husband, mother, sister, and their...

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