Thalidomide

In the late 1950s and early 1960s the drug Thalidomide (marketed in the UK by Distillers Company without sufficient testing) was a sedative and medication prescribed for morning sickness. The Thalidomide tragedy is the story of one of the worst disasters ever inflicted by medicine which led to thousands of babies worldwide being born with a range of birth defects.

‘The ugly story of a good fight’

Fifty years after its first publication in 1976 Routledge is now reissuing Thalidomide: My Fight with a substantial new introduction by the author. It is the powerful story of one man’s battle for his daughter – a battle which began privately and ended publicly.

It is the story of what happened when David Mason, a private family man, took on one of the UK’s largest corporations and clung on doggedly as his own legal team and other parents of Thalidomide babies turned against him – until he won. For the measure of the final success of the Thalidomide campaign was not just the immense publicity it created, thanks in part to fearless journalism; rather it was that, starting from an offer of compensation of £3.25 million, the amount eventually awarded to the affected children exceeded £30 million.

Thalidomide: My Fight is an inspiration to others who, when finding themselves up against odds that look formidable, feel like giving in. The book is a striking record of how a human tragedy, faced with courage, brought about a private fight for justice that ended as a public crusade.

In an era of ‘David and Goliath’ battles such as the Post Office Horizon Scandal and the Corby Toxic Waste Scandal this account remains as powerful and pertinent now as when it was first published.