The claim: Thalidomide, a rapidly approved drug, was banned in the early 1960s after it was discovered to cause birth defects in newborns. Thalidomide and its side effects continue to be cited by ...

Social media users are falsely claiming that the drug thalidomide was approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the 1950s or 1960s. Thalidomide was marketed internationally to pregnant ...

The drug was never licensed for sale in the U.S., so American victims of thalidomide number fewer than 20. Great Britain, however, has more than 1,000 thalidomide babies. In West Germany, where Chemie ...

"We were swept under the rug," C. Jean Grover tells PEOPLE about how, for decades, the U.S. government has neglected to provide financial aid and assistance to thalidomide survivors Anjelica Jardiel ...

But the babies whose mothers took thalidomide in the United States were largely forgotten. Today, more than half a century later, people who believe they are the U.S. survivors of thalidomide have ...

Appalling reports continued to roll in. So far as is known, close to 8,000 babies have been born deformed because their mothers used a sleeping-pill-tranquilizer called thalidomide (TIME, Feb. 23).