Thalidomide Essay

With the level of technology at where it is today there are many risks involved with many treatments. What the companies tend to do is advertise products and try to make the risks seem small. Every time you watch TV nowadays there is a commercial on there about a treatment that has

The main focus of this article is Richard Nares, a grieving father, who has become a hero in the eyes of many children fighting cancer. Nares has had a huge impact on two-year-old Sisi Johnson who has neuroblastoma. Sisi’s mother does not have a car and struggles to transport her daughter to and from chemotherapy as much as six times a week. Nares, who lost his son, Emilio, to cancer in 2000, has started a program called “Ride With Emilio”. This program provides transportation for low-income families with children battling cancer. The program has hundreds of patients who receive free rides to and from their cancer treatments. Nares met

Many Americans continue to believe that if a medication has been approved by the FDA it is safe for us to use, but the facts are many times they are not. You only have to look at all the medications that have been pulled from the market after many people lost their lives or had their health decay from these medications to know that nothing could be further from the truth. It helps to find a physician who will tell you to change your lifestyle rather than prescribe a pill that might have harmful side effects.

The importance behind this health issue is that major advances in medicine haven’t significantly improved survivor rates nor have medical advances reduced the number of cancer cases per year in children under 18 years of age (Curtin, Minino, Anderson, 2016).“Congressman McCaul is a father of five and knows that every parent’s worst nightmare is their children receiving a life-threatening cancer diagnosis. Growing up, his childhood best friend lost his battle to cancer. It wasn’t fair then and it isn’t fair now. Congressman McCaul founded the Childhood Cancer

The unregulated sales of Thalidomide also caused emotional distress and hardship for the future lives of mothers and their infants. The fatal drug 's side effects were displayed in pregnant women’s newborn babies. Infants affected with Thalidomide were born with limb reduction anomalies, congenital heart disease, ear malformations, and ocular abnormalities. The potential to live a long life was inhibited by the handicapped ailments each infant received. This created a lot of health expenses and difficulty obtaining an education. It is also very physically-challenging to perform everyday tasks causing many victims to often experience guilt and depression when realizing how unfortunate their circumstances

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), birth defects results in one of every 33 babies. Teratogens account for 4 out of 5% of birth defects when chemical and drugs are in the system. The use of this or even infections can cause abnormal fetal development.

After reviewing the article it is clear that more needs to be done to create transparency in the study of drugs and public awareness. As a doctor in Canada Dr. Navindra has a right to access and study information so he can provide due diligence to his patients. If the study found that this drug was harmful to pregnant mothers,

In general, with every pregnancy there is a 3-5% chance of having a baby with a birth defect. If a woman takes Thalidomide during her first trimester of pregnancy, the chance of her giving birth to a child with a birth defect increased to a 20%+ chance and the fetal and infant death rate is estimated to be 40% or more due to severe birth defects. (Thalidomide Side Effects on Babies). A portion of the children who suffer from birth defects caused by Thalidomide also suffer from developmental disabilities such as autism. Thalidomide victim survivors still suffer from these symptoms today. How does Thalidomide create all of these issues? The answer is science. The placenta is a very important organ that develops in the womb during pregnancy. The placenta nourishes the baby through through the umbilical cord and gets rid of all waste. The placenta is the first line of defense for the baby. It is a barrier that many harmful substances do not have the ability to cross. Before a pharmaceutical is offered to

This past summer, I, along with my mother and father, travelled to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. My mom had been invited to participate in the St. Jude For Life Study because when she was around six to eight years old, she had a form of leukemia called Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia. This particular study is to help all present and future St. Jude patients and help to research for a cure. While there, I saw first-hand how cancer can affect a family. You can just see all of the stress, the worry, the exhaustion, the tiredness, the fear, and the tears on the families’ and the patients’ faces.

Although the FDA approved the use of Zofran only for the treatment of nausea and vomiting in cancer patients, GSK promoted the drug to physicians as a viable treatment option for pregnant women experiencing severe nausea. This would later prove ill-advised.

In the late 1950s, the Thalidomide drug was used in Europe to treat morning sickness in pregnant women among other things. This study involved manufacturing company providing samples of this drug to physicians and compensating them to study the benefits and results of this drug. Although allegedly this drug did not cause any harm to the mother the fetus suffered severe damage as a result. There were thousands of children born with

As established in the National Cancer Institute, “Cancer is the leading cause of death worldwide for children and adolescents in America, accounting for more than 91,250 children that lose their lives to this disease” (National Cancer Institute). Cancer is not considered a terminal illness, but more of a chronic illness because of the intense treatment that the individual has to endure. As a result of this treatment the chances of survival for children suffering from pediatric cancer has increased around 80 percent. The increment in the survival rate has made it possible for many parents to not have to go through the acceptance that they are about to lose their child to a terminal illness, but have coping strategies that will make them adapt to the fear of the reoccurrence of that illness. This illness has a great impact on the patient as well as the family because not only do they have to adapt to this illness physically, but also mentally. Research has shown that there are both short term and long term effects that come into effect when the child is both in treatment and also years after the treatment. The type of cancers that these adolescents have to endure range from leukemia, brain tumors and other cancerous tumors that have appeared in recent medical studies. These tumors can either be benignant, an acute case that is non-cancerous or malignant, a cancerous case that will need intense treatment over an extended period of time.While many would say there is more of a

Why it is important in our society to know what teratogen is, and some ways to prevent this birth defect in our society. Teratogen is a agent that disturbs the development of an embryo. Well, what exactly causes these disturbances in the embryo? By taking medicine during pregnancy, medicine prescribe to new mothers can cause abnormality in pregnancy. Although many women take medications during pregnancy, the medicine prescribe can be harmful. A example may be a woman during pregnancy comes across morning sickness; therefore, she may ask her doctor to prescribe medicine to treat her morning sickness. A common medicine to take during the 60's was thalidomide. However, over the years researchers found that thalidomide caused partial absence

chemicals. Many women, who took diethylstilbestrol (DES) to prevent miscarriages, increased the risk for breat cancer in their children.

David Salsburg of Pfizer Central Research has noted that of 19 chemicals known to cause cancer in humans when ingested, only seven caused cancer in mice and rats using the standards set by the National Cancer Institute. This justifies that many substances that appeared safe in animal studies and received approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for use in humans later proved dangerous to people. The drug milrinone, which raises cardiac output, increased survival of rats with artificially induced heart failure; humans with severe chronic heart failure taking this drug had a 30 percent increase in fatalities. Also, the antiviral drug fialuridine seemed safe in animal trials yet caused liver failure in seven of 15 humans taking the drug (five of these patients died as a result of the medication, and the other two received liver transplants). Scientists and the populous that do not agree with