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Thalidomide Research Paper

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Thalidomide Disaster – How did it happen? Thalidomide, heralded as a wonder drug when it was first released into the market, was meant to alleviate morning sickness, lessen the effects of tumours in cancer patients and ease treatment of Leprosy and HIV/AIDS. Sounds great, doesn’t it? However, when the drug was released, it caused horrible birth defects to numerous babies, mainly in Continental Europe and affected many families. This was all caused by a slight difference in Chemical structure called Optical Isomerism. What is that, I hear you ask? Well, you’ve come to the right place as in this article I will be explaining what an Optical Isomer is, how it works, what effect it has and why it caused the disaster in the late 50s and early 60s. Isomerism What is an isomer? When two compounds have the same molecular formula, but a difference in the …show more content…

They occur in molecules that contain a Carbon atom attached four different atoms, or groups. The Carbon atom with four different groups bonded to it is said to be chiral and in most cases, an Optical Isomer possesses a chiral centre – these centres are important! A chiral centre, if in a molecule’s structure, means that two mirror-image arrangements are possible in space. Of these arrangements, neither can be placed over the top of each other and look the same, much like a right hand and left hand cannot. This causes the “non-superimposable” bit in the definition above. One way to identify a difference in an optical isomer is that, despite being chemically identical, they rotate plane polarised light in different directions depending on whether it is a ‘right hand’ or ‘left hand’ optical isomer. There are only ever two optical isomers formed for each chiral Carbon and if there are two in a molecule, then there will be two pairs of Optical

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