Dr McBride in the research lab
BBC
In 1960 a Distillers Co agent called Dr McBride in Sydney, marketing Thalidomide. The doctor agreed to try the drug on some patients, and was shocked in 1961 to deliver a baby with severe arm deformities. Within a few weeks, he delivered two more, all 3 dying.
It was Sr Pat Sparrow at Crown St who noticed that the limb defects were only in McBride's patients. At first he doubted her observations, but twice in Ap-Jul 1961 he contacted Distillers to suggest the drug’s association with malformations. The company ignored McBride and kept promoting the drug in Australia, to list on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.
A desperate McBride wrote an article for the important medical journal The Lancet 1961, warning of Thalidomide’s dangers. The article was rejected, but McBride wrote a letter in Dec 1961 which WAS published, asking if other obstetrician had noticed deformities in their Thalidomide babies. When confirmed, his findings led to many legal cases against Distillers. It also sparked a Sunday Times investigation which led to £20 million compensation for British victims in 1973. Then another £20 million in 2009.
In 1961 Dr Widukind Lenz (1919-95) was the first German doctor to recognise the problem. He and Dr McBride got together and alerted the world to potential malformations in pregnancy. By 1962, Dr Lenz had the drug quickly pulled from all German markets, nonetheless my generation of medical students still saw children born with missing or malformed limbs in the mid 1960s. Thalidomide affected c12,000 children worldwide, including hundreds in Australia. Although Dr McBride had bravely warned the world about Thalidomide, and won international acclaim for his research, the first Australasian Thalidomide victims struggled to win compensation.
His discovery was critical in protecting uterine life. And his warnings eventually led to the recommendation that NO drugs should be ingested by pregnant women. McBride was awarded a medal by L'Institut de la Vie, part of the French Academy in 1971. Using the $40,000 prize-money, he created Foundation 41, a Sydney-based medical research body examining the causes of birth defects in the first 41 weeks of life.
Working with Dr PH Huang, McBride proposed that Thalidomide caused malformations by interacting with the DNA of the dividing embryonic cells. This work was published in the Journal of Pharmacology & Toxicology, one of the top ten important Australian medical discoveries.
In the mid-1970s, Dr McBride's involvement in the Debendox aka Bendectin case was less welcome. He believed Debendox, another anti-nausea medication, also caused birth defects. There was little evidence to back his claims, but McBride testified against the American company anyhow. In 1981 he published a paper on experiments on rabbits with hyoscine, a Debendox component, supporting his hypothesis. Other researchers said that McBride’s published paper used manipulated data.
The manufacturer defended Debendox in multiple lawsuits in the US, Britain and Australasia. Dr McBride happily appeared as an expert witness against Merrell Dow Co. in some cases, supporting the plaintiffs. Merrell Dow took Debendox off the market in 1983, maintaining that it was safe, but saying that making it was no longer cost effective.
In 1982 he published his work in a scientific journal suggesting scopolamine, which he said was similar to Debendox, should not be taken in early pregnancy as it caused birth defects in rabbits. This claim proved to be his undoing; even Dr Lenz testified against Dr McBride.
Thalidomide affected arms and hands
ABC
In 1987, medical journalist Dr Norman Swan, in an analysis for ABC’s Science Show, found that Dr McBride had failed to properly record the amount of drug the rabbits received, its timing in pregnancy etc. [The evidence came from Foundation 41 biologists]. Swan won a Walkley Award for his research; McBride’s career moved in the other direction.
In 1988 an investigative committee found that McBride published statements which he did not genuinely believe to be true and thus was guilty of scientific fraud. He resigned as Foundation 41’s Medical Director but donations to Foundation 41 dropped off and forced it to close.
Dr McBride was called to the Medical Tribunal of NSW to face 7 counts of research fraud and negligence charges. The medical disciplinary proceedings continued from 1989-93!! Eventually he was cleared of misconduct but found guilty of scientific fraud; they struck him off the Australian medical register in 1993.
Dr McBride was re-registered in 1998, with the right to practise medicine but NOT to do research. For years he’d been a hero, with headlines proclaiming his vital work, and awards: Man of the Year 1962, Commander of British Empire 1969; Father of the Year 1972 and Order of Australia 1977. Then a fall from grace!
McBride: Behind the Myth by Bill Nicol, 1989 is very sad but fascinating. Thanks for the guest post by Dr Joe
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28 comments:
I learnt this when I was in medical school. Your detailed history tells me that it is just so hard to prove something to drug companies that they are selling toxins to the public.
Roentare Thalidomide was a compound that was developed and tested in the 1950s by a West German Company. Researchers there found that it was virtually impossible to give test animals a lethal dose of the drug, so the drug was seen as harmless to humans. Thalidomide was licensed in July 1956 for scriptless-sale in German pharmacies.
Only years later was the connection between thalidomide taken by pregnant women and their foetuses made. Now drug companies have acknowledged that these crises resulted in much tighter drug testing and reporting; that the medical and pharmaceutical industries learned greatly from the crisis.
I wonder why Dr McBride felt compelled to fudge his later research findings. Surely he would have realised that peer reviews would expose his inaccuracies.
Was Dr McBride nominated for a Nobel Prize? Or Dr Norman Swan?
Hi Hels - an interesting post by Dr Joe - I didn't know the history ... or about the doctors and organisations involved. Desperate symptoms ... Hilary
jabblog I understand that every professional wants to earn fame and recognition for his or her own work, and Dr McBride certainly did. Early in his career he bravely contacted the company to suggest their drug’s association with malformed babies' limbs. When the company kept promoting the drug, the doctor risked his career and finally proved the dangers of thalidomide in pregnant women.
But did he have a sudden (or slow) change in personality?? In 1981 he published a paper on experiments on rabbits with hyoscine, supporting his newest hypothesis. The manufacturer defended Debendox in courts across US, Britain and Australasia. Dr McBride often appeared as an "expert" witness against Merrell Dow Co. who took Debendox off the market in 1983. Dr McBride published his work again, persistently claiming his theories but without evidence! That was not bravery; that was fraud.
Deb Dr McBride won an impressive list of awards, but was never nominated for the Nobel Prize, as far as I can find.
Dr Swan was awarded the highest honour in Australian journalism, the Gold Walkley, for revealing Dr McBride's scientific fraud. Dr Swan's investigations were risky, but in the end they led to Dr McBride being de-registered.
Hilary When the limbless babies were born in Sydney, following their mothers' use of thalidomide during pregnancy, the medical world was turned upside down. And not just in medical journals. When I started medicine in 1965, my generation of medical students was still seeing children born with missing or malformed limbs. It was tragic.
My mum was prescribed Thalidomide when she was expecting me but she didn't take it she didn't feel fight taking it and was very relieved she didn't when all the birth defects became know.
It is a sad story whichever way you look at it. From hero to zero as they say.
I only knew of McBride's disgrace and not his good work in the sixties. In the eighties my partner cared for two Thalidomide men in their fully staffed government run house for five residents. They were both the size of a four year old and utterly and wholly dependant on others for their life. This was not too long after Kew Cottages closed and the funding was generous. They seemed relatively happy young men but sadly both died when in their twenties.
Jo-Anne
your mother (and her doctors) could have had no intuition about the effects of Thalidomide on pregnant women and their foetuses back then. She was just very very lucky.
Fun60 What a great expression. In 1994 all 25 people on board were saved when a pilot was forced to ditch a DC-3 aircraft into Botany Bay after facing problems seconds after leaving Sydney Airport. Pilot Capt Rod Lovell's book detailed the truth behind the ditching and blowing the whistle on his treatment by the authorities which crushed him financially and destroyed his professional flying career. He faced 25 years of frustration and persecution, before vindication. From Hero to Zero, by Capt. Rod Lovell, 2021.
A closer example concerned Dr Andrew Wakefield, respected researcher at London’s Royal Free Hospital whose reports launched a fear campaign in 1998, linking autism _to_ the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine. In 2008 a study of measles antibodies in 250 children who had been given the vaccine provided powerful evidence _against_ any link with autism. Dr Wakefield, former heroic academic, was struck off the medical register for his involvement in the autism fraud.
Andrew
when the Thalidomide Society was formed in 1962 by the parents of children affected by this drug. They found that over 10,000 babies were affected worldwide, with half dying within months of being born and the rest living a few years. By the 1980s noone would have expected your partner to be caring for adult men born with Thalidomide damage.
The Society still contributes to ongoing research and archival material on the drug.
I wonder why he did this . Did he develop an absolute phobia against using any medications in pregnancy . It must have been extremely traumatic to feel responsible for the deformed babies that he delivered . It just seems so strange that he was prepared to lie to get these drugs off the market when he had little to gain .
mem
for an ambitious, educated, successful and globally known professional, it must have been very difficult to resume life as just an ordinary doctor. That doesn't explain why he committed fraud himself later on, but it might explain the punishment brought down on young researchers who questioned the authority of this highly reputed Director.
And it might explain Dr McBride's dismissive responses to the Committee of Inquiry. His and his medical supporters'.
Dreadful drug back in the day.
McBride did his best, I remember his name.
It's really a lot about the drug companies wanting money...such a pity.
I remember reading about the dangers of Thalidomide and being grateful that I hadn't experienced much morning sickness, so didn't need medication for it. I only ever saw deformed babies on TV or in magazines.
Margaret. Dr McBride certainly did his best, after he realised that the thalidomide drugs he had prescribed for his own pregnant patients was extremely dangerous. I am sure he was humiliated at first, but then faced all the difficult problems with the drug - it was an international issue rather than just in his own city; the drug companies were making huge profits; and the research on rabbits etc had never been up to the required standards. He was a brave individual early in his career, tackling this drug crisis.
Now of course pregnancy is the MOST researched period in subjects' lives.
River there were always stillborn, deformed or very sick children born, even in top quality hospitals. But the specific period from the late 1950s -> early 1960s was the only time when Thalidomide was prescribed to treat nausea in pregnant women. Hopefully you would never have seen newborns damaged before or after that small window of obstetrics history.
I remember the awful Thalidomide scandal very well but never knew this back story so thank you for posting it.
(When I first saw the title of this post I immediately thought of that wonderful song by Eric Bogle known as either No Man's Land or The Green Fields of France:
Well, how do you do, private Willie McBride?
Do you mind if I sit here down by your graveside?
And rest for a while in the warm summer sun
I've been walking all day, and I'm nearly done. )
CLICK HERE for Bazza’s nervously nefarious Blog ‘To Discover Ice’
bazza Eric Bogle has been in Australia for the majority of his adult life, but I never made a link between the real Dr McBride and the unknown Private Willie. Bogle's work was important in Australia because the late 60s-mid 70s focused so much on the futility of war. Not now, probably.
Boa tarde de quarta-feira. Excelente trabalho e matéria muito rica, minha querida amiga.
Luiz 1960 seems a long time ago now. But the medical profession, drug companies and pregnant women learned so much from this case that we are still being rigorous in testing, research and medical care today.
I knew about the effects with thalidomide, but I hadn't heard of Debendox. Nor had I heard of McBride. This was really interesting to read, and even though we all need medicines at certain times, it does make you think about how much you might take or what side effects could happen, even though hopefully our medicines now are tested.
Erika You probably have not heard of thousands of medical and surgical procedures, and until they are tested and retested in every country of the world, you probably will never hear of them. There are probably some drugs I have never heard of, despite having practised medicine for 53 years.
The question we still need to ask is "if Thalidomide was being manufactured and being given to patients as recently as the late 1950s, how was it not thoroughly tested and retested _before_ the drug companies started their vigorous distributions?" Medical research in the late 1950s was already rigorous, not based on medieval superstitions.
That was an interesting read. It is a shame McBride went off the rails. When I was in U3A we had a talk from a lady who was a thalidomide victim. She is a photographer and artist. All done with her feet. As she is getting older she is finding it harder to be so supple. A sad fact she mentioned was that her mother blamed herself for her child's disability because she took the drug.
diane
No mother could ever blame herself for taking her doctor's prescription during pregnancy. Even the doctor was doing the right thing, until the research data finally came out.
U3A witnessed that some thalidomide babies survived infancy and made creative, productive lives for themselves. Most did not.
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