Black Triangle

The BBC report on the use of thalidomide in children with brain tumours.

While this may seem counter-intuitive, given the serious congenital disorders that thalidomide was responsible for, it should be remembered that one of the marketing angles for thalidomide in the 1950s was that it was a safety breakthrough for children.

At the time barbiturates were widely prescribed. A child could die from an accidental overdose of barbiturates quite easily; thalidomide overdoses were much less likely to do so. This was famously exploited in an advert for Thalidomide with the headline “This child’s life may depend on Distaval (thalidomide)”