What a difference 61 years makes. In November, 1962, thalidomide was withdrawn from use in Australia but only now has there been an official apology for the appalling harm inflicted by the sedative and morning sickness drug on its users – pregnant women and their foetuses. Last week, the Prime Minister delivered a formal apology in parliament to those killed or permanently disabled by a poorly-tested drug that could result in congenital malformations (most publicly visible in its victims as a shortening of the arms or legs), miscarriages, sight or hearing loss, facial paralysis, damage to organs and death.
Thalidomide was developed by the German pharmaceutical company, Grünenthal, in the 1950s and was widely used in 46 countries, including Australia from 1960. Only when worldwide reports of numbness in users’ hands and feet, and painful nerve damage, began to surface, followed by waves of miscarriages and limb deformities in new-born children, with more than 100,000 children acquiring lifelong disability, did governments begin to withdraw thalidomide from use. By 1961, most countries had banned it but Australia was a laggard, delaying its withdrawal until late 1962.
Despite not testing the pregnancy drug on pregnant women (make sense of that one!), and despite Grünenthal never doing any post-market safety checks on users which would have quickly picked up a pattern of damage to mother and child, the drug was advertised as so incredibly safe that it was initially sold off-the-shelf, no prescription required, with governments waving this arrangement through with no questions asked. Only later, were warnings added to the packaging, with some jurisdictions also requiring prescription-only access, but for about four years, thalidomide had the run of the pharma shop only lightly patrolled, if at all, by governments.
Only, now, in 2023, in Australia, has there been formal government recognition of the harm caused by thalidomide in Australia. This follows a successful $89 million class action by Australian and New Zealand victims settled with Diageo, the company which distributed the drug in the region under license from Grünenthal.
Like the spike protein Covid ‘vaccine’, thalidomide, too, was pushed by its manufacturers as ‘safe and effective’ even though Grünenthal knew at the time that it was causing significant damage. The company denied or minimised the reports of adverse outcomes, they pressured editors of medical journals not to publish critical articles and they hired private detectives posing as patients to spy on any troublesome doctors.
Grünenthal has a shady past, having been formed in the mid-late 1940s in Germany whilst its director in charge of thalidomide had been a Nazi doctor in the German army who had performed medical experiments in occupied Poland. In the 1970s, Grünenthal had even appointed as board chairman a man, Otto Ambros, who had been convicted and jailed for mass murder at Auschwitz. The company’s unsavoury history did not help the ‘safe and effective’ reputation of thalidomide.
It has, however, been business as usual for the Covid vaccines even though a comparison of the thalidomide disaster with the Covid ‘vaccine’ tragedy invites itself even if the Prime Minister can not see the Covid parallels. His apology studiously avoids anything that would admit to mistake or error with the cockamamie government policy response that lockdowns, masks, social distancing and salvation through vaccination was public health wisdom of the highest order in the face of an overrated respiratory virus.
“Too often, we have let you down”, said a sombre PM of the “parliaments and governments” who failed the victims of Thalidomide and “all over the country, expectant mothers were assured by doctors and chemists and advertisements that this drug was perfectly safe, for them and for their baby”, his Apology said. Just like the Covid ‘vaccines’, said no one of any importance in the public health class.
The Thalidomide Apology emotes about the “hidden struggles and invisible pain’ of Australia’s thalidomide victims but the vastly larger number of Covid vaccine victims, and their “constant battle against declining health and increasing need”, remain consigned to official oblivion. The Thalidomide Apology recognises that “even after the grave dangers of it were known, importing thalidomide was not prohibited” but the same lament does not apparently apply to the (suppressed) knowledge of the damage that the Covid vaccines have wrought. For the Covid ‘vaccines’, there will be no ‘National Site of Recognition for Survivors and their Families’ erected on the shores of Lake Burley Griffin.
It is not even certain just how regretful the government is over thalidomide, let alone the Covid ‘vaccines’. Thalidomide, and its ‘more potent’ renaissance analogues, are making a comeback with investigations into their use for the treatment of some cancers, Cohn’s Disease, HIV, Karposi’s sarcoma, leprosy and, irony of ironies, as a treatment for Covid. Ask yourself, would you buy a repurposed thalidomide drug from the Big grinning Pharma Man for a seasonal infection that is no worse than a cold for most people?
If the Thalidomide Apology is any sort of precedent, perhaps we can expect a government Covid Vaccine Apology in another 61 years which would make it around the year 2084. I won’t be around then but neither will the principal architects of the hysterical and destructive overreaction to a unremarkable virus, so sufficient time may have elapsed by then to make it politically safe enough for official recognition that our current crop of Covid lunatics got it all terribly wrong and to finally say sorry for the unnecessary, ineffective and harmful policy delirium that ensued.
Heck, by 2084, even the Moderna mRNA vaccine factory in Monash, Victoria, might yet be mothballed and end its deadly days as a mausoleum to the supreme idiocy of today’s Covid policy.
Hi Phil. Agreed.
Apologies for high jacking your article, please remove if not ok. Copied from Australia Exits The W.H.O "Last Friday 8th December there was a call for submissions for the Covid Inquiry from the Office of Prime Minister and Cabinet - however we only have until this Friday 15th December, one week, to get submissions in".
https://www.pmc.gov.au/covid-19-response-inquiry/consultation
This is clearly deliberate as this inquiry is intended to be a complete whitewash. We strongly urge everyone to submit a response requesting a full Royal Commission for a proper investigation into:
Vaccine procurement and secret vaccine contracts
Vaccine mandates
Vaccine injuries
Mask mandates and lockdowns
Government misinformation in the media regarding the ability of vaccines to block infection and transmission along with denial of vaccine injuries and gaslighting of the injured
The AHPRA lack of due diligence on safety, their silence on undeniable harm of the vaccine and their action along with ATAGI to silence the Medical Profession.
Who decided to do the opposite of the 2019 Australian Health Management Plan for Pandemic Influenza, which prophetically described why all of the actions the Government did take would not work and would cause hardship?
Phil,
OMFG,
I've got no words, other than thank God I dodged their motherfucking bullet being conceived in '67.
It's gonna be a long march of shame on Judgement Day.....
Daniel Lanois wrote a beautiful song on the subject of man's inhumanity to man:
https://youtu.be/P0E3R1cSfIM?si=73MdFhGCk1qY0ysy