The German pharmaceutical company Grunenthal commissioned clinical trials of the active ingredient in Thalidomide, a drug used to reduce or eliminate nausea during pregnancy. It was also tested on breastfeeding women, but only one case was mentioned involving a pregnant woman, and positive effects were reported, but no tests were performed on the fetus. Today, it is known that the problem of nausea during pregnancy is virtually unsolvable. In 1960, Dr. Widukind Lens presented a case of malformed babies and blamed Thalidomide. His judgment was considered exaggerated by most. However, the poor documentation provided by the supplier led the FDA to ban the drug from marketing in the United States. Lenz then demonstrated the correlation between phocomelic babies and the drug. Between 1960 and 1961, at least 20,000 phocomelic babies were born, 8,000 of them in Europe. The country most affected was Germany. It would later emerge that the drug had never been tested on pregnant women and its effects on the fetus were subsequently monitored. Grunenthal, which still exists in 2015, never paid the penalty. Only in 2007 did the heir of the then owners apologize to the victims. Today, it is mandatory to test any new drug during pregnancy, first on animals and then on humans.
