The tests of 511 people with severe malformations attributed to thalidomide, a drug prescribed in the 50s and 60s as a harmless tranquilizer and is also used for nausea of pregnant women, has revealed that four out of five deformations have causes unrelated to the medication. So argue the first conclusion of the Scientific-Technical Committee created by the Ministry of Health, pointing out that just 103 of 511 individuals analyzed presented malformations “compatible” with the thalidomide, whilst still remaining 73 studies by completing.
These data have been received with surprise and bitterness for those affected, that after decades of requests for aid neglected —also in the courts— now see it as the majority will be left without compensation. The association that represents them (Avoid) made public a statement yesterday that with the title “mathematics does not deceive” question the data of Health. “Germany has 82 million inhabitants and has recognized nearly 3,000 victims. England has 56 million and agree 458 affected. It is not credible that Spain, with over 46 million inhabitants and where thalidomide was prescribed for a longer period, can only have a hundred”, summarizes one of its members, Rafael Basterrechea.
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Avoid considers that the “economic reasons” explain these data. “The general Budgets of 2019 received 20 million euros for the victims and want to close the whole process with this amount,” adds Basterrechea. According to the association, Health raised in 2017 to indemnify with “12,000 euros each percentage point of disability.” The majority of the entity’s members has recognized a disability of between 60 and 70%.
the source of The evidence is in the agreement reached two years ago between Health and Avoid to open up a process to pay compensation to the affected that were neglected in a first recognition, that only benefited 24 people, carried out by the Government in 2010. Those affected were, then, between 30,000 and 100,000 euros, depending on the degree of disability suffered.
The Scientific-Technical Committee, formed by geneticists, and other specialists, and which has counted with the support of figures of reference world, “has designed for this procedure, a panel of sequencing […] for the study of 47 genes involved in 55 genetic diseases different”, according to documents accessed by this newspaper.
This and other tests have allowed to relate the cases suffered by 408 people who were born without any limb, or these abnormally small other ailments unrelated to thalidomide. Of them, 196 suffering other “defects transverse” in the extremities; 145 “birth defects such as abnormalities of Poland, ectrodactilia or other; 43 disorders disruptive” and the rest genetic pathologies as the syndromes of TAR, Okihiro, and Holt Oram, among other rare diseases.
The responsible of the study admit that “from the human point of view, the procedure is very complex and sensitive”, as all the participants are “people with congenital problems, serious, mostly, with a long history of suffering” which, in any case, “will continue living with a situation tremendously impactful in your day-to-day.” For this reason, those doubtful cases “have been included among the editions with thalidomide”.
genetic analysis of the tragedy will prevent future damage
The genetic analysis of patients believed to be victims of the tragedy of thalidomide, manufactured by the German laboratory Grünenthal, will prevent future malformations. It is those cases whose origin was not on the medication, but in rare hereditary diseases”. “To tell them apart is very important, because if you go unnoticed in the [patients] evaluated can be transmitted and pose a risk to their offspring. To prevent these situations is an additional responsibility of this process”, subscribes the chairman of the Scientific-Technical Committee, Encarna Guillén, a geneticist at the Hospital Virgen de la Arrixaca (Murcia).
thalidomide has caused thousands of deaths in the last half-century. “Rates of early mortality” among the affected, have been estimated between 40% and 80%, according to studies cited by the Committee. The drug, which today is restricted to hospital use, has found in recent years new applications to tackle some types of cancer, such as myeloma, among other ailments.
