Quotes About Thalidomide

The rationale for the FDA's rigid standards is to avoid the sale of a drug like thalidomide. But the unintended consequence is almost certainly to allow many more people to die prematurely than would have died from side-effects under a less restrictive regime. We count and recount the costs of such side-effects. We do not count the costs of not allowing new drugs to be made available.

In addition to thalidomide, Grünenthal's painkiller tramadol—created in 1962 by former SS doctor Ernst-Günther Schenck—sparked a decades-long global opioid crisis before it was classified as a Schedule IV controlled substance in 2014.